THE RAVAGED EARTH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27043, 30 March 1949, Page 2

THE RAVAGED EARTH

Literature

AN AMERICAN WARNING Our Plundered Planet. By Fairfield Osborn. Faber and Faber. 13s 6d.

This challenging record of the rape of the earth’s food-producing resources has aroused as much interest in America as “ The Road to Survival,” which was discussed at length in our editorial columns recently. The author, who is president of the New York Zoological Society, is earnestly of the conviction that, unless public opinion the world over is aroused to a proper appreciation of the need for conservation and good husbandry, the earth’s fertility cannot continue to sustain the rising population.

Man, says Mr Osborn, is the new geological force which has broken the organic circle of natural existence. The argument of science that the ! damage can be repaired by man’s technological ingenuity, without specific reference to a healthy soil, is, in the author’s opinion, fallacious and dangerous. “It is,” he writes, “ above . all necessary to keep the fact in mind I that fertile soil is alive in the sense I that it harbours many different kinds I of living organisms that function in relationship to one another and provide, in effect, the health and productivity of the soil itself. Ingenious as man is, he cannot create life.”

In his insistence on the healthy, “ living ” soil replenished with organic stimulants which encourage and do not destroy the bacterial content, Mr Osborn’s views are in conformity with the advanced agricultural thinkers of Great Britain, where the writings of the late Sir Albert Howard have aroused considerable interest in the subject and have encouraged many practical farmers and agronomists to adopt his principles. The steady deterioration of the sensitive earth cover through unimaginative agricultural practices is. in the opinion of the author, responsible for many of the present degenerative diseases, and he quotes as an example of the reckless disregard of the intimate relationship between human and soil health the fact that of more than 14,000,000 men examined in the United States during the recent war only 2,000,000 were physically fully up to standard, and 12 per cent, were mentally unfit for military duty. Through all the food-producing countries of the world the author traces the unhappy story of soil impoverishment through abuse and erosion. “ Freedom from want,” he maintains, “will always be an illusory hope unless the, pronouncement of the ideal is coupled with a statement that clearly sets forth the facts of the present crisis, so that all peoples everywhere may join in a common endeavour to resolve it—the time for defiance of Nature is at an end. E. A. A.