Студопедия — CRITIQUE OF THE BUREAU OF SOILS
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CRITIQUE OF THE BUREAU OF SOILS






Now let us see what happened in the committee hearings to the Bureau of Soils. The following question was asked:

"I want to know wherein the practical benefit is received by the ordinary farmer or by the agricultural interests of the nation from the chemical and physical investigations of this Bureau we are now discussing."

The business of the soil survey is to decide what is a soil. Nobody ever did that before. Unfortunately it seems even God Almighty did not do it."

The modesty of this answer is something overwhelming. It seems that the young man making the survey, who probably was not even brought up on the farm, ~cam ride out in a Ford car and look over the fence at a field and tell more about it than God Almighty, who. created it, knows. This faculty of original discovery of facts long known is not confined to the Bureau of Soils. It is also characteristic of other Bureaus in other Departments.

Here is what the man in the Ford car finds out:

"We determine the nature of a soil. We determine the distribution of that soil wherever that soil is found. We determine the characteristics of that soil. We know then when the soil survey is carried out that here in a given place is a certain kind of soil and there is so much of it. We know the soil in terms of its characteristics, of its texture, for example, of its chemical composition. To be sure when I talk about chemical composition I cannot say that it has 2.39 per cent. of potash in it, rather than 2.37 per cent. of potash. It would take thousands of years to determine that; but I can say whether it has 2.39 per cent. of potash, or 1.5 per cent. of potash, or.65 per cent. of potash.

For example:

"Let us take Genesee County, New York. We send out two men into that area, usually with a Ford car, and they locate themselves in some spot in the center of the area to be surveyed. They go over every road in that county and examine the soil all along the road. I do not know that I could say accurately that they examine every foot of the soil in the county; but they go along the roads and also between the roads, so they can undertake to see all the land in the county and determine its characteristics. Two men will survey an average county containing 600 square miles in about six months."

It is thus seen that these two surveyors by driving along the roads in a Ford car (I suppose any other make of car would do just as well) determine all the characteristics of the soil down to the depth of ten feet, give it a name, which is usually the local name of the vicinity, and furnish all the data to make a map of that county with apparently never having the benefit of a single chemical or physical analysis of the soil. As in a field of fifty acres, outside of the glacial region, there may be a dozen different types of soil, this is some feat. Of course all these men must be trained agriculturists or else they could not tell the character of the subsoil to a depth of ten feet without having a sample of it. If they had a sample they couldn't tell anything about its nature until they had a chemical and physical analysis thereof. They must have intellects of most unusual character and training that few, even practical farmers, have had, to make these nice distinctions. Their eyes, too, must have amazing powers of telopsis to see ten feet below the surface. The striking thing about this is the vast amount of information the man in the Ford car gathers in about an hour and a half. So much more information than the Almighty possesses! If it would take thousands of years to tell whether a soil has 2.39 per cent of potash, rather than 2.37 per cent, the question arises, how many thousands of years would it take to get these other data?

Let me quote from another author about this omniscient scientist in the Ford car; (of course Goldsmith didn't know anything about soil-mapping):

"And still they gaz'd, and still the wonder grew

That one small head could carry all he knew."

But the wonder is not to be restricted. The witness goes on further:

"Now here we have that soil distributed so far. The same results can be effected on that soil wherever that soil is found."

This is most interesting information. Suppose we take any one of about a thousand varieties of soil that have been mapped. We find one particular soil in the northern part of Minnesota. The same soil is found in Missouri. That same soil is found in Florida. You can grow oranges and sugar cane on that soil found in Florida. According to the Bureau of Soils you can grow oranges and sugar cane on that soil in Missouri and in Northern Minnesota. Knowledge of soil is rapidly growing! This is emphasized by the rhyme:

"When the Sea rolled its fathomless billows

Across the broad plains of Nebraska,

When around the North Pole grew bananas and willows,

And mastadons fought with the fierce armadillos

For the pineapples grown in Alaska."

Speaking of the soil survey man it is stated:

"When his experiments have been carried out, when he obtains his result in the end--it may be a good long while, experiments are necessarily slow always, it takes a good long while to find them out,-but when he has found out that on a given soil certain results are obtained, then if the soil survey has done what it ought to do those same resulta can be effected on that same soil wherever that soil is found."

To this I may say that if the soil survey has done what it ought to do it would take several thousand years of experiment before there would be justification for publishing a single soil map.

The questioner did not seem to be quite convinced. He asked some other troublesome questions in regard to how all these data were obtained, and especially what the chemists were doing. He was informed:

"Well he (the chemist) assists. I am talking now of what he does in relation to the soil survey. He helps us to determine what the characteristics of soils are. You see in the soil survey we do not maintain laboratories because there are other laboratories and there is no use in duplicating.

Considering the intimate knowledge which is obtained by the soil survey in a Ford, it is interesting to know how much ground is gone over. In answer to the question, How is your work progressing? thefollowing information was elicited:

"Very well; we are covering now, I cannot give you the exact figures in square miles, something like 25,000 to 30,000 square miles per year; possibly a little more than that. Two men will survey an average county containing 600 square miles in about six months.

Another embarrassing question was asked:

"I am talking about the maps. I want to know what practical use the people who get these soil surveys put them to."

He was told:

"Sometime ago I picked up a copy of Hoard's Dairyman, and in that Journal there were two photographs; one., a photograph of the roots of alfalfa grown on one soil type, and the other was a photograph of the roots of alfalfa grown on another soil type. I believe one lot was grown on bottom land and the other was grown on upland soil. Now let me stick a pin in it for a moment and go to another thing.

(The questioner.) "We will put a twenty-penny nail through it."

To this came the response, going one better:

"Or a railroad spike. The soil survey map shows the characteristics of the soil, not only on the surface, but down to a depth of, say, from six to ten feet. In other words, it shows the soil all the way down."

All this intimate information from 30,000 square miles a year! C'est magnifique!

Many questions were asked as to what benefit to the farmer came from the soil survey. It was the opinion of the Committee that the chief benefits that the farmer got from the soil maps was in the fact that they gave all the roads. The particular thing it wanted to know was what practical use ihe people who get these soil maps put them to. The answer was that the county agent is really the man to interpret the maps. That may be true now, but when the maps were first printed there were no county agents.

~ It finally developed that about 35 per cent of the agricultural portion of the United States has been mapped. At this rate the soil survey will last until about 1980. The number of different kinds of soils will be nearly 3,000 and oranges will be growing in Alaska. The different types of soils which have already been given distinctive names are well up toward athousand.







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