Word: vogt
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...Elastic Soil. Real scientists take a dim view of Road to Survival. Here & there, they admit, among Vogt's errors, prejudices, mysticism and reckless appeals to emotion, they can find iotas of truth-but not many. From the verbiage of Vogt and his fellows, three central ideas about soil can be winnowed. All of these ideas are wrong, and the scientists knock them down easily...
First is the notion that "soil cannot be stretched," that each acre has a certain production capacity (Vogt calls it "biotic potential") which cannot be boosted without dire peril. This is the same fallacy that expresses itself in the old saying, "There are only so many slices in the cake." Some businessmen say this when they decide that their markets cannot be expanded and, therefore, should be divided among them in quotas set by their cartel. Some labor unions decide that there are only so many jobs to be divided, and therefore oppose labor-saving devices...
...adds lime and fertilizer and grows grass or clover or alfalfa. Gradually the thin, sour forest soil turns into something like chernozem. The well-kept farms of New York State, Pennsylvania and Ohio are now far more fertile than they were when the pioneers (who so vex Vogt) first felled the forest...
Tortillas for 17. In Tennessee (average corn yield 25 bushels an acre), hybrid corn has produced 157.2 bushels an acre. The produce of one such bountiful acre would keep 17 corn-eating Mexican peas ants in tortillas for a year. Such results reduce to gibberish Vogt's theory of "biotic potential...
This is not true everywhere, say the soil men, and it need not be true anywhere. And the situation is not as bad as Vogt & Co. say it is. Soil mining and erosion are still causing inestimable damage, but not so much as before. The U.S. Soil Conservation Service believes that U.S. soils are now getting better, on the whole; the downward trend has been reversed...