SOIL AND CIVILISATION.

Kaikoura Star, Volume LXII, Issue 23, 23 March 1942, Page 4

SOIL AND CIVILISATION.

The close inter-relationship of the condition of the soil and the health of a community is discussed in an article in the current issue of Forest and Bird. The writer states that “In both New Zealand and Europe (including Great Britain) there is evidence of malnutrition among the populations, and this malnutrition is often found whore the populace is amply fed. The full reasou for this paradoxical situation has not yet been discovered. Defects in dietary constituents, the social systems, etc., have all in turn been invoked in attempts at explanation of this malnutrition in the midst of plenty, often in the midst of over-production, but all aspects of this matter cannot be explained on these grounds. When early man with his primitive tools returned all refuse and waste to the soil he lived in a state of symbiosis with the soil, but civilised man with his tools has become a parasite on it. When man’s relation with the soil changes from a condition of symbiosis (that is, a living with, for mutual benefit) to one of parasitism (living on), then he is doomed to extinction. The history of past civilisation teaches us this much.”