Customer Reviews

The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture (Culture of the Land)

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The Soil and Health is a wonderful book that is equal parts agricultural science and environmental advocacy, with just a dash of kooky Nature worship thrown in. Howard was a conventionally trained agricultural scientist in the late 19th and early to mid 20th century who was employed by the British government to bring modern industrial agriculture, based on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides to Britain's tropical colonies. Soon, though, he realized the value of more traditional agricultural practices from India and China, especially in keeping the microbial, fungal and invertebrate life in the soil healthy.

If you believe in the value of organic agriculture, it is somewhat sad to see how little has changed since 1945. Howard confidently predicts in his book that organic methods based on compost would soon sweep the globe. Things have changed some, though. We can now buy "organic" labeled products in most markets in America, and I believe that more people have an appreciation for the importance of treating the earth well. This book does an excellent job of establishing and reinforcing that appreciation.

As a long time reader of Wendell Berry, I have been fascinated to read this book that Berry claims to have influenced his thinking to such a great extent. Sir Albert Howard is a wonderful science writer, able to lucidly explain complicated biological processes and marshall all of his observations in the service of a coherent argument about our relationship to nature. I see deep truth in this book, and an approach to scientific thinking that never loses site of our unavoidable ignorance or our ultimately spiritual destiny.

Jared Diamond and others have written about how civilizations have destroyed themselves by exploiting their soils. Sir Albert Howard said the same thing, but he said it 100 years ago. Howard was the father of the modern organic, holistic farming movement. This book is incredibly readable and will change how you think about food, soil, and the fate of civilization.

[[ASIN:0813191718 The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture (Culture of the Land)]

Robert Rodale dedicated the September,1948 issue of ORGANIC GARDENING as a memorial to Albert Howard . I made this note from that issue, "The purpose of this book is threefold:to record my own observations and reflections, which have accumulated during some forty-five years, on the occurance and prevention of disease, to establish the thesis that most disease can be traced to am impoverished soil, which leads to imperfectly synthesized protein in the green leaf and finally to the breakdown of those protective arrangements which Nature has designed for us." Howard's preface.

Also from my notes, "The quality of our food and health decreases each year. In 1995the USA ranked 17th in life expectancy, in 10000 we ranked 24th. Countries are not ranked 17th in life expectancy on the internet at WHO Statistical Information System. Dr. Christopher Murray, MD,PhD of Who has this to say,"Basically you die earlier and spend more time sidabled if you are an American rather than a member of most other developed countries"

A God bless you to Wendell Barry for your introduction. I am still haunted by your UNSETTLING OF AMERICA;CULTURE AND AGRICULTURE which I read many years ago.