SOIL AND HEALTH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26473, 29 May 1947, Page 4

SOIL AND HEALTH

Sir, —Sir Sfanton Hicks’s address to the medical section of the Science Congress should commend itself to every thoughtful citizen, and especially to those who are entrusted with the necessary power to make decisions for the future welfare of society. If the maladies from which modern civilisation suffers are to be decreased, it is highly desirable that the public should realise the prime importance of healthy soil. Social security is not enough; prevention is better than cure. The physical and mental vigour of a community depends largely upon the quality of the food it eats. An A class nation cannot be produced on a C 3 diet, no matter how plentiful the commodities may be. Pasteurised milk and apples will not serve as body builders if the soil where they originated' is not maintained in a healthy condition, for which adherence to natural laws is the ABC of all husbandry operations. A healthy soil is a living one teeming with countless millions of bacteria, all working the round of the clock, decomposing organic waste, and synthesising the residues into available plant food. Without their industry man would perish; to ignore their importance in the natural cycle is to write the ultimate death warrant of the nation. Man’s existence on this earth, in the long run, depends, upon the maximum restoration to the soil at all times of animal and vegetable waste. The natural cycle is: Organic waste, soil, plant, food, animal, and man.

When the tractor replaced the horse the land was robbed of millions ol' tons of animal manure, and when water-borne sewage was introduced into our towns, the capital of the soil—its fertility—which is removed from it year by year in the form of crops and live stock, no longer found its way back to the land, but was poured, and is being poured, into the sea. In New Zealand every year millions of pounds of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus are being destroyed. King, in his classic, " Farmers of Forty Centuries.” writes: "Man is the most extravagant accelerator of waste the world has ever endured. His withering blight has fallen upon every living thing within his reach, himself not excepted; and his besom of destruction has swept into the seas soil fertility which only centuries of life could accumulate—fertility which in the substratum of all that is living.” “ Healthy citizens are the greatest asset asset any country can have ” (Winston Churchill). —I am, etc., A. M. Davidson.