Farming and Gardening for Health or Disease

The great problem before agriculture the world over is how best to maintain in health and efficiency the huge human population which has resulted from the Industrial Revolution. As has already been pointed out, this development is based on the transfer of food from the regions which produce it to the manufacturing centres which consume it and which make no attempt to return their wastes to the land. This amounts to a perpetual subsidy paid by agriculture to industry and has resulted in the impoverishment of large areas of the earth's surface. A form of unconscious banditry has been in operation: the property of generations to come, in the shape of soil fertility, has been used not to benefit the human race as a whole, but to enrich a dishonest present. Such a system cannot last: the career of the prodigal must come to an end: a new civilization will have to be created, in which the various reserves in the earth's crust are regarded as a sacred trust and the food needed is obtained not by depleting the soil's capital, but by increasing the efficiency of the earth's green carpet. This involves the solution of the problem of manuring.

Why does the problem of manuring arise? What is the reason for our constant anxiety about the state of the soil? This preoccupation is as old as the art of agriculture. The problem occurs throughout the world, being recognized as a first consideration among all cultivating peoples. Its antiquity and its universal character are striking and must lead us to conclude that it is based on something of fundamental importance.