DEEPER CULTIVATION

Grey River Argus, 9 May 1936, Page 4

DEEPER CULTIVATION

A striking plea for deeper cultivation of the land by all farmers and foodgrowers was made by Dr. I*. Winter Gonin. ALR.C.S., L.R.C.P.. a West End specialist, in a lecture on dietetics, given at the Central Hall, Westminster, recently. Dr. Gonin claimed that if his cultural methods were adopted much of the. disease from which human beings suffer would disappear in the course of three generations. One gramme of garden soil, said Dr. Gonin, contains 100,900,000 living oigunisim—some harmful, others beneficial. The control of these organisms was dependent upon a- sufficiency of oxygen. An insufficiency would result in the harmful bacteria gaining the ascendancy, a state of disease being the effect. Thus, all diseases of plant were due to a lack of oxygen. This lack of oxygen was in its turn due to the hard pan which existed about Sin. below the soil surface as a result of centuries of shallow ploughing. Another result of this hard pan was that rain could not soak away quickly enough and the surplus -water drained off by ditches, streams and rivers instead of being stored in the soil ready to be drawn up by capilliary action in time of drought.

Dr. Gonin said that cultivation should always be to such a depth as to break right through the hard pan. even if this meant ploughing to a depth of 20in.

As an example of the beneficial effects of this deep cultivation, Dr. Gonin described an experiment in which one acre of laud had been ploughed dceplv and nim* surrounding acris had been treated in the ordinary manner. 'The whole area was then sown with wheat. The erop on the shallow land was infected with disease, but the wheat on the acre of deeply cultivated soil remained perfectly healthy.

Dr. Gonin further said that diseases of animals were due to the .consumption of diseased crops, and, similarly that it was the eating of unhealthy vegetable or animal foods which caused human diseases. Cancer in animals and humans might, he claimed, he traced back to food products which themselves had cancerous growths brought about by lack of oxygen and essentia! vitamins because the soil in which they were grown was not hcalthv.

The treatment of seed with copper sulphate, formaldehyde, and other poisons to prevent disease breaking out was an outrage, said Dr. Gonin. Deep cultivation alone could eliminate disease—by eliminating the cause, insufficiency of oxygen.—The Smallholder.