Get "back" to better methods?
That would be: burn out a farm and move, wouldn't it?
It was in the 30s that the poor farming practices that burned out the East
spurring a migration to new farmland, burned up the Mid West and made a
Dust Bowl, prompting congress to suggest that farmers improve "the old
ways" ie DEVELOP better methods.
That's when we started to get what we have NOW. That's when they
*started* using chemical fertilizers and studying plant nutrition and
eventually adding in minerals and other nutrients to the fertilizers.
I'll bet food has more in it today than it did in the 30s. [ It can get
better.]
It "may" have been better *before* the 30s , but only where there were
still forests to slash and burn for potash, but there was also a lot less
of it. People fought and died over river bottom land.
The country of Chile was a result of a war over bird droppings. If *good*
fertilizer was rare and expensive enough to die over, how many farmers were
using it? Not many and then, only the wealthy.
"The old days" Typically, it was burn the stubble, get out the mule, plant
the same thing again and hope for the best, then move when it wasn't good
enough. The Pennsylvania forests of today are loaded with 100-200 year old
ruins. The South East forests, terraced. So badly burned out that grass
for cattle wouldn't grow and STILL won't in some places, just scrubby
stunted short needle pines with a very long tap root.
That's those "better methods" of yesteryear.
There were no better methods to go back to, not that they didn't exist
anywhere on the planet to 'some degree' by default, accident and
desperation being used by a few thoughtful farmers in survival mode, but
virtually no one knew about them here...or used them anywhere.
One reason people came to N America was to escape famines, a goodly portion
of which stemming from poor farming practices in Europe.
Organic/ sustainable farming as we know it and believe it's old, is a
'New" thing, borne of desperation as we go into another sort of Dust Bowl,
still in development by wacko hippies who can read hand writing on walls
with no where left to move to. [ The danged Hippies been "right" more than
once...realistic, sometimes, but then, perhaps the best of new realities
are watered down and fertilized fantasies.]
It's being developed by methodical science, study and experimentation,
not replicated from centuries of ignorance.
In the "old days" life was ignorant, hard and short for the majority of folks.
Most people suffered from some sort of malnutrition, there were no clues
about balancing a diet....you ate what you could get. That just "happened"
to be, a little of this and a little of that during the local growing
seasons, then it was hard tack, dried beans, salt pork and a touch of
scurvy by spring.
When people learned to make canned goods in the 1800s, that was a vast
improvement. [Took another 50 years to invent a can opener and another 70
or so to stop using lead solder]
Ode
At 01:47 PM 9/10/2007 +0100, you wrote:
--On 9 September 2007 08:10:52 -0700 Harold MacDonald <[email protected]>
wrote:
The US Library of Congress has documentation going back to the mid 1930s
re the severe lack of nutrient value in food.This document laid a heavy
trip on modern farming practices.The nutrients in the soil were virtually
non-existent as crops were heavily fertilized with chemicals.Farmers were
urged to get back to better methods.
This document can be read by any-one.
AND,you may be sure that most grown food today is no better than it was
70+ years ago.
Correct. It woul dbe good to see the trend of kitchen gardens/allotments
increase ,for this reason. They could supply surplus to local circles too.
I would like to see this return as the normal practice for mean and women,
as it was in England even in the pre-war periods.
Each one of us should try to, as this is a reversal of global domination,
to produce our own food.
JOhn
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