DO PLANTS HAVE QUALITY? 21 



suspect that these poorly nourishing products would have something 

 in common with most of the vegetation produced there. When it is 

 known that the cotton belt is the nation's greatest consumer of ferti- 

 lizers, the basic status of its soils is clear. When it is further revealed 

 that soil scientists are bawling for a widespread increase in such soil 

 amendments, plus manures, plus crop rotations, plus diversified farm- 

 ing, plus more permanent pastures, we do not wonder that the collec- 

 tive rural manhood of the region has tended to be susceptible to 

 diseases, plagued by deficiencies, and lacking in stamina. Thus does 

 climate hover over human destiny. Wooden plants make wooden 

 people. 



If the southeast listens to the soil scientist and it is it may 

 succeed in creating soils good enough to remedy the situation. It is a 

 fact that soil can be improved, and in many cases may be brought to a 

 state of fertility superior to that found by the pioneer settler. Not 

 infrequently it happens that only one or two or three minerals are 

 short, and adding them to a soil makes a remarkable difference in that 

 soil 's productivity. It is often like putting gasoline in an empty tank, 

 whereupon the entire machine can go into useful action. Sometimes 

 a considerable variety of soil minerals are lacking or are in such a 

 chemical state that plants cannot get them ; then the problem is more 

 complex and difficult. 



Three hundred years ago the early tobacco growers of the southern 

 Atlantic Coast discovered something. It was that three years of 

 tobacco (a notorious soil depleter) exhausted the soil so thoroughly 

 that new fields had to be cleared. 1 For this reason the English planters 

 were constantly pestering Charles II for additional grants of land. 

 Thirty thousand acres was considered a reasonable area for staying in 

 business. This was virgin soil. What three hundred years of care- 

 less use have done to it may be imagined. But, imagination is not 

 necessary. The facts are available. 



If we go on south into the tropical jungles, we find still poorer red 

 clay soils and still less nourishing plants. Most people think the 

 heavy vegetation of the tropics indicates high basic fertility. It does 

 not. It indicates a superficial productivity. The vegetation is mostly 

 woody, and one generation of it is living on the decaying remains of 

 the last. The soil is merely receiving nutrients from one plant and 

 handing them quickly, by swift decay, to another. A high fraction of 

 these limited nutrients is thus saved from leaching by being con- 

 stantly imprisoned in organic matter. The animal and human popu- 

 lation is small, primarily as a result of protein shortage. Only in the 

 higher altitudes of the equatorial region do we find any natively de- 

 veloped civilization, and in climate these areas are not tropical at all. 

 In the low areas, when natives clear a space for gardening they use 

 it two or three years then move ; in that short time its fertility has 

 been exhausted. 



*It will be argued by some that tobacco had to be discontinued because of 

 diseases. There is considerable evidence that plants growing in a truly complete 

 and fertile soil are not subject to diseases on a scale sufficient to force -abandon- 

 ment of the crop. See Pay Dirt by J. I. Rodale, The Devin-Adair Co., New York, 

 p. 165 and chapter 4. 



