Should Farmers Receive Tax Allowance for Soil-Building?
THE 85% OF THIS country’s population living in urban areas do not yet feel any obligation to help maintain fertility resources coming to them gratis from people in rural areas. How soon will the country wake up to the obligation owed those who maintain reasonable levels of soil fertility so that the country may be well fed? Carefully lobbied legislation has set up laws, economics and taxation procedures so that this country’s urban commercial businesses and industries have capital investments which are self-sustaining.
For example, the owner-investor of a limestone quarry may be allowed a depreciation figure as high as 15% of his income for rock taken from a quarry. And it may be a larger figure for the owner-investor of an oil well. Capital investment in these mineral businesses is soon recovered.
As yet, no economist or taxation authority has suggested the justice of a depletion allowance to the landowner for the maintenance of his soil fertility capital to replace mineral fertility taken from the soil and delivered as food to the urban population without charge. The landowner’s investment in soil minerals for good production is gradually being liquidated under the economic thinking—or the lack of it—which contends that the farmer is thereby taking a profit. On the contrary, the landowner throws by installments his financial and the national security into the bargain every time he makes a sale of farm products. Those on the urban receiving end of that transaction get those installments free and flush them into the sea.
Everyone is a party to the crime of soil fertility exploitation but yet are complaining against the rising costs of living. People are slow to see that such shortsightedness in economic, agricultural, and other policies toward the soil’s fertility resources are seriously undermining national security. All this is more serious with a growing pressure on the soil’s production potential by an increasing population, not to mention the rest of the world calling on this country to share that potential with them. Liming soils deserves consideration as an operation undergirding future food security—particularly foods of high protein content. It has long been known that lime is needed for legumes. Again, people are slow to see that need as one for the production of protein, rather than the tonnage, yield of the crop. By the soil route, lime provides meat, milk and eggs.
Viewed in this light, one cannot escape the question whether people dare expect the farmer to continue liquidating his fertility assets under the false idea of taking a profit and, at the same time, ask him to purchase large amounts of limestone to increase his liquidation rate all the more.
Isn’t it about time that a basic agricultural policy, the required machinery of economics and taxation be designed to guarantee the self-perpetuation of the farmer’s fertility capital which must feed everyone—both urban and rural?
Shouldn’t soil fertility maintenance—and thereby of agricultural industry—be interpreted by the same views in economics and taxation as those prevailing in other industries? This should be true now that fertility rebuilding by limestone and fertilizing the soil is moving itself into the category of soil chemistry for the nutrition of plants, animals, and people. Perhaps this country can bring about self-perpetuation of soil fertility capital under the agricultural business in the rural areas in the same manner as perpetuation prevails for monetary capital under all businesses in urban centers. If that situation is brought about, then rebuilding the fertility of the soil will become big business by meeting major soil needs.