Shorter Notice
Ploughman's Folly. By Edward Faulkner. (Michael Joseph. 8s. 6d.) FOR centuries the basis of agriculture has been the plough ; and it
Mr. Faulkner's revolutionary proposal that the plough should forthwith be dispensed-with. The first need of all plant life is a good supply of organic matter ready to hand, whereas the plough merely succeeds in burying this organic matter six to eight inches under, where the plant cannot serviceably get hold of it. In other words, the farmer should follow nature more closely, and—as she is doing all the time—" recharge the soil surface with 'materials that will rot." Has he not noticed, asks Mr. Faulkner, how, while his own pampered plants in the field were wilting, those around the untended headlands stood up firm and green? The fact is he has cared for his charges too well. The fault wag' in desiring a level easily workable bed for the seed : what the plants really wanted was an "organic sponge on top which would provide the substance for a maximum plant-growth. "The satisfying truth is that a man with a team and a tractor and a good disc harrow can mix into the soil, in a matter of hours, sufficient organic material to accomplish results equal to what is accomplished by nature in decades." Dispense, therefore, with the plough—and with all the implements dependent upon it—and concentrate upon the disc-harrow which will leave the necessary organic matter just where it is needed : such, in brief,, is Mr. Faulkner's revolutionary advice, based on steady, first-hand experience in America and here presented in terms the merest layman can readily follow. As to the final significance of this advice, obviously a short review is no place in which to favour or to refute it ; but at least it may be said without hesitation that here is a challenge to traditional methods which all who are involved in agriculture should seriously inves- tigate, since, as Mr. Brade-Birks suggests in his Foreword, the very least that could result would be "major improvements upon our present methods of cultivating the soil."
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