Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

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ground—turning our dirt into soil. Recycling organic matter literally put
life back in our yard. Adjusted for scale, the same principles could work for
farms.
About the same time that mechanization transformed conventional agriculture,
the modern organic farming movement began to coalesce
around the ideas of Sir Albert Howard and Edward Faulkner. These two
gentlemen with very different backgrounds came to the same conclusion:
retaining soil organic matter was the key to sustaining high intensity farming.
Howard developed a method to compost at the scale of large agricultural
plantations, whereas Faulkner devised methods to plant without
plowing to preserve a surface layer of organic matter.
At the close of the 1930s Howard began to preach the benefits of maintaining
soil organic matter as crucial for sustaining agricultural productivity.
He feared that increasing reliance on mineral fertilizers was replacing
soil husbandry and destroying soil health. Based on decades of experience
on plantations in India, Howard advocated incorporating large-scale composting
into industrial agriculture to restore and maintain soil fertility.
In Howard’s view, farming should emulate nature, the supreme farmer.
Natural systems provide a blueprint for preserving the soil—the first condition
of any permanent system of agriculture. “Mother earth never
attempts to farm without live stock; she always raises mixed crops; great
pains are taken to preserve the soil and to prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable
and animal wastes are converted into humus; there is no waste; the
processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another.” 10
Constant cycling of organic matter through the soil coupled with weathering
of the subsoil could sustain soil fertility. Preservation of humus was
the key to sustaining agriculture.
Howard felt that soil was an ecological system in which microbes provided
a living bridge between soil humus and living plants. Maintaining
humus was essential for breaking down organic and mineral matter needed
to feed plants; soil-dwelling microorganisms that decompose organic matter
lack chlorophyll and draw their energy from soil humus. Soil organic
matter was essential for the back half of the cycle of life in which the breakdown
of expired life fueled the growth of new life.
In the 1920s at the Institute of Plant Industry in Indore, India, Howard
developed a system to incorporate composting into plantation agriculture.
His process mixed plant and animal wastes to favor the growth of microorganisms,
which he considered tiny livestock that enriched the soil by
breaking organic matter into its constituent elements. Field trials of
dirty business