Word: topsoil
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...Cortes' time, the Indians planted their crops in 16 inches of topsoil. Now they count themselves lucky if they plant in six. Corn, grown year after year on the same plots, has sapped the goodness from the soil. In the current Harper's Magazine, William Vogt, chief of the conservation section of the Pan American Union, warns that "unless there is a profound modification in its treatment of the land, the greater part of Mexico will be a desert within 100 years." (The peril, warned Vogt, hangs over all Latin America...
...Erosion is another menace that Dr. Kellogg thinks has been oversold. Some soils erode badly, he says, but others do not, even on steep, long-cultivated slopes. Great gullies cutting through a field destroy its value, but gradual erosion does little harm and may even be beneficial. When the topsoil washes gradually away, the subsoil may turn into topsoil with renewed fertility. "Much [erosion]," says Dr. Kellogg, "is a perfectly normal concomitant of mountain building and wearing down ... An important part is essential to the formation of productive soils. One cannot, or should not, try to stop erosion, but rather...
...others, "nature's rich, black topsoil" has almost mystical value; once lost, it can never be restored. The fact is, explains Dr. Kellogg, that many virgin soils, especially in the forested eastern U.S., were not productive originally; they had to be nursed to fertility. Some highly productive soils never had a dark upper layer...
...earthworm population is declining because farmers have been scraping away the nation's topsoil for generations. The five-hearted earthworm is coldblooded, cannot survive a sudden freeze. In free-plowed fields, where the earth is laid bare (and in entire areas, like the Corn Belt), earthworms die off in great numbers each winter...
Readers who have the tenacity to wade through The Wallaces will make a topsoil-deep acquaintance with U.S. farm problems and politics; that, and not character portraiture, is its only reward. At 51, big, friendly Russell Lord edits The Land, a sound agricultural quarterly, at his Maryland farm, runs a correspondence section for the Country Gentleman. The Wallaces wasn't "authorized," but Henry A. and the rest of the family were always ready to pitch in and help. Wallace read every chapter (but the last) as Lord finished it, pretended not to be interested. Says Lord: "Maybe he wasn...