Participants in the discussion: Henry A. Wallace, Hugh H. Bennett, Wm. A. Albrecht, H. E. Middleton, F. L. Duley, Savoie Lottinville, Firman E. Bear, and Paul W. Chapman

Voices of Dissent

“The Indictment Will Not Stand”

Plowman’s Folly advances ideas so astonishing that the little book is sure to receive considerable attention. Polite reviewers will call it stimulating. The less well informed may even term it a bold step toward newer understanding.

If all of Mr. Faulkner’s premises were true and his reasoning without fault his book would be big news, yet the most sensational feature of the work is the nonchalance with which he sweeps aside the accumulation of years of scientific research and farmer experience while staking his reputation on meager personal experience with a few crops grown in a backyard garden.

Proceeding from the common knowledge that excessive use of the plow has accelerated erosion of the soil, Mr. Faulkner reasons that the implement is altogether destructive. He makes it the scapegoat for all the plowman’s mistakes in soil management, and for the effects of his honest utilization of the elements stored within the soil for man’s appropriation.

This same manner of reasoning characterizes many of his arguments. For example, he says: “The mold-board plow has been shown to be the villain in the world’s agricultural drama,” and only a bit earlier there is the claim that “the plow had saved humanity almost literally.” In what has a more scientific flavor he says: “Most of the dissolved plant foot that escapes down streams originates from decaying material plowed in.” Such reasoning would argue that there was little leaching until man began to plow. It would make the saltiness of the sea a modern event.

Capillary movement of water within the soil is held up as a great force in plant nourishment. It is the central “scientific” theme given repeated emphasis. This occurs despite the admitted suggestion to the author in 1937 by his “crop specialist” acquaintance of “nearly twenty years” who said: “Tests show that there isn’t much capillary movement in the soil as we believed existed–it’s really unimportant in many cases.” Water and temperature are considered the main factors in plant growth. They are held responsible for variations in plants within a restricted locality.

He exhibits enthusiasm about turning under organic matter merely grown (or allowed to grow of its own accord) in place without the additions of manure, lime, or other fertilisers. He takes no cognizance of differences in vegetation, either in kind or quality. Weeds or forest trees as ancient as the Sequoias are taken on a par with legumes as soil-rejuvenating agencies. He says: “every wooded country a perfect example of soil maintenance” with no mention of the low level of fertility and difficulty in nourishment of life involved. The soils where such widely different plants dominate and drop back in decay are not different according to the contention that the plow is wholly responsible for the low productivity of the land.

He cites animal life in abundance on the western plains in the belief that its prevalence was due to the absence of plowing. He omits the historic event of declaring a Thanksgiving holiday along with the discovery of a few turkeys in the unplowed wooded areas of our eastern coast.

Such differences in the kinds and concentrations of both plant and animal life in accordance with natural differences in soil fertility (other than water and temperature) he disregards. Such differences were prevalent long before the plow was known. They stand up prominently in the reader’s mind as refutations of the claim that “Principles which are valid in the forest are valid in the field.”

Intent on arraigning the plow, which inverts completely the upper portion of the soil profile, but on advising the use of the disk harrow, which carries out a similar process differing only in degree, the author gives many pseudo-scientific claims centered about water and temperature for “the debacle into which our American agriculture has drifted.”

Mr. Faulkner’s indictment of the plow will not stand against the facts of science nor the judgment of experienced farmers. The publication of Plowman’s Folly will fall far short of bringing us to “realize that the Garden of Eden, almost literally, lies under our feet almost anywhere on earth we care to step” provided only that we allow vegetation to grow, and that we cling to the disk-harrow as a means of turning it under, rather than to the mold-board plow.