Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

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Seeing secession as the only option, he argued that slave labor had sustained
advanced civilizations like ancient Greece and Rome. Upon learning
of Lincoln’s election, Ruffin hastened to attend the convention that
adopted the ordinance of secession. When the sexagenarian was awarded
the distinction of firing the first shot at Fort Sumter in April 1861, he had
already helped start an agrochemical revolution by demonstrating that
manipulating soil chemistry could enhance agricultural productivity.
Ruffin thought that soils were composed of three major types of earths.
Siliceous earths were the rock minerals that allowed water to pass freely
and were thus the key to a well-drained soil. Aluminous earths (clays)
absorbed and retained water, creating networks of cracks and fissures that
served as miniature reservoirs. Calcareous earths could neutralize acidic
soils. Ruffin thought that soil fertility lay in the upper few inches of a soil
where organic material mixed with the three earths. Productive agricultural
soils were those composed of the right combination of siliceous, aluminous,
and calcareous earths.
Ruffin recognized that topsoil erosion squandered soil fertility. “The
washing away of three or four inches in depth, exposes a sterile subsoil
...which continues thenceforth bare of all vegetation.” 22 He also
agreed with agricultural authorities that manure could help revive the
South. But he thought that the ability of manure to enrich soil depended
on a soil’s natural fertility. Manure would not improve harvests from acidic
soils without first neutralizing the acid. Ruffin did not believe that calcareous
earth fertilized plants directly; supplemented by calcareous earth,
manure could unleash masked fertility and transform barren ground back
into fertile fields.
Ruffin further saw that the institution of slavery made the South
dependent on expanding the market for slaves born on plantations. He
believed that surplus slaves had to be exported unless agricultural productivity
could be increased enough to feed a growing population. Ruffin’s
views on agricultural reform and politics collided with the reality of the
Civil War. He committed suicide shortly after Lee surrendered.
The problem of soil exhaustion was not restricted to the South. By the
1840s, addresses to agricultural societies in Kentucky and Tennessee
warned that the new states were rapidly emulating Maryland and Virginia
in squandering their productive soils. By the advent of mechanized agriculture
in the mid-nineteenth century, per-acre wheat yields in New York
were just half of those from colonial days despite advances in farming
w estward hoe