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Another thing they laugh at is the familiar phrase, "irreplaceable topsoil." Topsoil should certainly be cherished and protected, the soil men say, but it is not irreplaceable. In 1937, a U.S. Government experiment station skinned ten inches of soil off half an acre of virgin Ohio grassland, leaving nothing but the yellow subsoil. Corn planted on an untreated strip of this poor stuff produced no crop at all. But other strips were nursed along with fertilizer and crop rotations. During the sixth season, the best strip of man-made topsoil produced 86 bushels of corn an acre, more than twice the U.S. average. Pennsylvania farmers often sell the topsoil of whole fields to mushroom growers. Then, by proper measures, they create new topsoil.
Corn for Dixie. Man is master not only of the soil, but of the plants that grow in it, molding them plastically to suit human purposes. Until recently, the U.S. Southeast had never been good corn country. A few years ago the U.S. Department of Agriculture began breeding special hybrid corns to suit Southern conditions. In North Carolina, whose corn yields ran around 22 bushels an acre, the new "Dixie" hybrids, lavishly fertilized and planted thicker than ordinary corn, made 125 bushels.
Farmers heard about it, and a wave of corn enthusiasm swept over North Carolina. This fall 645 farmers reported crops of over 100 bushels an acre. Top honors went to 77-year-old J. R. Simpson of Union County, who, with his daughters Eula and Cora, raised 136.24 bushels on a single acre. He planted his hybrid seed (Dixie 17) 12-15 inches apart in the rows instead of the usual 2-3 feet. He used plenty of fertilizer, which kept the leaves brilliant green until picking time. Most stalks had two big ears instead of the usual one. Farmer Simpson's net profit, after allowing for seed, fertilizer and labor: $125 on a single acre.
Tortillas for 17. In Tennessee (average corn yield 25 bushels an acre), hybrid corn has produced 157.2 bushels an acre. The produce of one such bountiful acre would keep 17 corn-eating Mexican peas ants in tortillas for a year. Such results reduce to gibberish Vogt's theory of "biotic potential."
Output per farm worker in the U.S. has been multiplied 2½ times in the past 50 years. In 1787 it took 19 American farm people to support one other person, in addition to feeding themselves. Nowadays 19 farm people can support themselves, 56 other Americans and ten persons in other countries.
The second main dogma of the Neo-Malthusians is their belief that the productivity of the world's cultivated land is falling now and is sure to fall even more because of erosion and exhaustion. The enormous crops that the U.S. raised this year, they say, are a cruel illusion; they were achieved by "soil mining," and will be paid for inexorably in future crop failures.
This is not true everywhere, say the soil men, and it need not be true anywhere. And the situation is not as bad as Vogt & Co. say it is. Soil mining and erosion are still causing inestimable damage, but not so much as before. The U.S. Soil Conservation Service believes that U.S. soils are now getting better, on the whole; the downward trend has been reversed.