Almost anywhere that one selects a soil in cultivation and puts a sample to chemical test, one is impressed with the soil’s liberal supply of lime. In this calcareous nature of the soil one can see the reason why alfalfa (spoken of as a “lucerne”), clovers and other legumes are so common in their crop rotation schemes. One can also understand why most farmers answer no to a query as to whether limestone is used for crop improvement.

The geology of France helps explain the extensive areas of calcareous soils. Many of the broad stream valleys, with low or very gradual grades leading out from them—where most of the farm regions are located, are residual soils from limestone, from calcareous shales and from other secondary rocks with high contents of lime. Even geological erosion, and unobserved sheet erosion from top soil under cultivation are pushing the development of a new soil downward in the profile apparently fast enough to compensate for these losses. The farmer is seemingly making some new soil in the bottom of furrows just about as fast as he is wearing off the old soil at the top.

Then, too, this country is located fairly well north. It lies between the latitudes of about 42½° N and 51° N—equivalent to stretching out between Detroit and the tip of James Bay, or from Sioux City, Iowa, to Winnipeg, Canada, in our hemisphere. As a peninsular land, however, it does not have wide fluctuations in weather. It does not have very cold winters or very hot summers. It does not have short, alternating hot and cold or wet and dry spells. Instead, its seasonal changes are gradual. Its rains are drizzles rather than “gulley-washers.” The water goes into the soil more that it runs off. Every rain has a high percentage of penetration and thereby a high potentiality in benefit to the growing crop. This is pronounced under the low evaporation at this northern latitude. So that, even though annual rainfall is not much more than 30 inches, it serves very efficiently especially for the shallower rooted crops such as grass.

Such combination of country and climate provide a good set of conditions, namely, plenty of mineral fertility and not so much rain. But when that rain comes it makes a grass which one can say—much as we do of our short grass country— that “every mouthful counts” in terms of animal growth. Here there are feeds for growth more than for fattening, since the plants have the fertility to compel them to do more than just catch fresh air, water and sunshine to give a starchy product and fattening values. It has the contributions from the soil that are needed to build bone and brawn in big animals.

Where lime has not been leached out, then other elements of soil fertility also remain. It is well to remember that calcium serves to mobilize other nutrients into the crop. Even though these others are, at times, not so plentifully present, yet they serve efficiently because they are associated with the lime.

Fortunately for France, many of her limestones are rich in fossils. These skeletons of animal life in the ancient seas represent considerable phosphorus. In testing what would be considered almost a sandy or even a gravelly soil one is often surprised to find it high both in lime and phosphate. This is the fertility combination which represents nearly complete chemical constituents of the skeletons of farm animals—a combination that is so essential for growing leguminous feeds that produce young animals so efficiently.

The farmer of France has for years practiced feeding his animals on homegrown feeds. Because these crops from fertile soil are highly nutritive, he does not have to search for supplements to bolster bulky roughage feeds. For generations he has clung to the principles of the old art of agriculture for which science has only recently given us a better understanding. We have gained a fuller appreciation from such experiments as those carried out, for example, by the work of Professor Weaver at University of Missouri.

In short, only about one-third as much pork was obtained from the crop which is said to grow on soils of much lower fertility than that required for alfalfa. It means that, after all it is fertile soil which makes live stock. The farmer of France has long been growing good animals largely because of the fertility of his soil, which has been well maintained in terms of lime and phosphate. Although there naturally, fertility has been carefully conserved by the wise and consistent use of manure.

It may be that the farmers in these older countries have been not so much the leaders as they were the followers in this whole matter. It may be that allowed the animal’s choice to take the agriculture to the more fertile and more lasting soils. In these older agricultures, originally nomadic, it is quite possible that the flocks and herds, more than their owners, led the way to particular soils where the plow came later to bring a permanent agriculture. It may have been the choice of good natural herbages by the animals, or the biochemical assay of the soil fertility by live stock, that led pasturing animals initially and arable agriculture later to the fertile soils and kept them off those not so productive.

Regardless of factors leading to the initial selection of agricultural lands, whether by man or by flocks and herds, the lime rich and relatively phosphatic soils have contributed much to the agriculture of France. It will be well, too for France if that fact is not forgotten as she comes out of the present political turmoil and economic shake-up in Europe and begins to make plans for her future. There are many suggestions that in the days to come she may be depending upon her lime-rich soils in a still larger way for feeding not, only live stock but her people as well.