Explore "An Agricultural Testament" by Albert Howard on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Indore Process for the manufacture of humus from vegetable and animal wastes was devised at the Institute of Plant Industry, Indore, Central India, between the years 1924 and 1931. It was named after the Indian State in which it originated, in grateful remembrance of all the Indore Darbar did to make my task in Central India easier and more pleasant.
Although the working out of the actual process only took seven years, the foundations on which it is based occupied me for more than a quarter of a century. Two independent lines of thought and study led up to the final result. One of these concerns the nature of disease and is discussed more fully in Chapter XI under the heading--'The Retreat of the Crop and the Animal before the Parasite'. It was observed in the course of these studies that the maintenance of soil fertility is the real basis of health and of resistance to disease. The various parasites were found to be only secondary matters: their activities resulted from the breakdown of a complex biological system--the soil in its relation to the plant and to the animal--due to improper methods of agriculture, an impoverished soil, or to a combination of both.