How Good is Grassland Farming?
IN HIS ARTICLE entitled “Is Grassland Farming Bunk?” Mr. Gale Evans of Indiana points out that, in the humid eastern half of the United States, grassland farming is not a good means by which to build up, or even maintain, the fertility of the soil. Much has been said recently to carry the belief that it is. Mr. Evans cites his practices of such a scheme of farming to point out the error of such belief.
Grass May be Soil Cover Anywhere, But it Becomes Nutritious Forage Only as the Soil Fertility Makes it So
Mr. Evans reports the common fallacy in believing that the planting of certain crops, and that certain rotations of them, build up the fertility or productivity of the soil. This fallacy is often implied when folks speak of “Prairie Soils” and “Forest Soils” and in that classification of the soils they imply that the former is more fertile than the latter because the grass made it more so than the forest trees did.
This belief is usually supported by citing the fact that the virgin soils which grew the shorter grasses originally also grew herds of bison and today have herds of cattle growing themselves successfully in that area. Also, since soils which originally grew the taller prairie grasses were taken over to be good soils on which to grow wheat and corn, a particular virtue has been attributed to grass crops as though this crop made those soils fertile.
It is also recognized that soils under grass do not erode seriously, since the dense mat of such vegetative cover absorbs the destructive and erosive impact of the falling raindrops. The grass crop has therefore been considered a Godsend to prevent erosion of the soil and at the same time to be good feed for the grazing animal. Poetic language has extolled its many virtues supposedly pointing in these directions.
Little thought is given to the defective logic in giving the same grass crop these two virtues, namely, (a) good cover against erosion and (b) good feed for grazing animals, when two widely different levels of soil fertility under the grass may be the differing causes of these two values and thereby, really, two different kinds of grass crops may be involved.
Basically, Mr. Evans is citing this fallacy: namely, that the simple introduction and the growth of the grass crop on the humid, highly developed, less fertile soils of Eastern United States did not make this crop a great feed. Nor did these build up the fertility of the soil under his experience. Grass established its qualities and reputation as good feed for buffalo and cattle on the Great Plains because the more fertile soil out there was responsible.
Grass came east as seed but did not bring that fertile soil along when it traveled in that direction.
Therefore the grass growing on the humid soils is not the same quality as the grass growing on the Plains. Therein two different physiological performances by the grasses were involved, and therein is the origin of the fallacious belief that the grass made the virgin Plains land fertile and will therefore build up the soil in Indiana for Mr. Evans if he uses grassland farming merely as a cropping scheme expected to build up the soil.
Plants Don’t Play Santa Claus
It was an advertisement for tobacco which once said repeatedly “Nature in the raw is seldom mild.” Accordingly, plants cannot be expected to be philanthropists making soils fertile for animals and for us. Instead, plants are taking from the soil all they can to grow the most reproductive potential for themselves.
So when grasses covered the mid-continent and served so well in the growing of young grazing animals and in keeping older ones surviving, it was because those soils were growing protein-rich and mineral-rich feed constituents in the grasses as well as offering carbohydrates in them.
In finding so much more complete nutritional service by the grass, namely, the protein and mineral supplements to the carbohydrates grown right into the feed, we are prone to consider the plant species as the cause of the excellent nutrition of the animal. We fail to see the high fertility of the soil under the grass as the real cause for this complete feed service to the animals.
Such high fertility was the result of the particular climatic setting of moderate to low rainfall which prohibits the trees requiring water more regularly, if not more abundantly, but allows survival of the intermittently growing crop of grass which accommodates itself to periodic summer shortages of water and is not extinguished by drought. Such a drier climatic setting which eliminates forests but grows grasses, does not wash out the fertility of the soil when the rainfall scarcely exceeds the evaporation.
Virgin soils so slightly developed are therefore fertile; they grow wild legumes; and they build themselves up in organic matter. Consequently they produce protein-rich mineral-rich vegetation by which the so called “grass” or “prairie” soils obtained their reputation as fertile soils.
It was in consequence of the fortunate fertility construction that grass has erroneously gotten the reputation that it builds a less fertile soil into a more fertile one. Growing the grass is not making the soil fertile. The fertile soil is making the grass grow as a better feed, even though grass will grow itself as soil cover on much less fertile soil where it will have less quality in its services in animal nutrition. Because grass grows, that is no proof that it is delivering nutrition.
Mr. Evans is testifying in a similar way to the fact that, contrary to common belief, the rotation of the crop does not build up the soil. Rather the farmer does so by bringing fertility in from some other sources such as limestone for calcium and magnesium; rock phosphate, or that treated with acid for the phosphorus ammonium and nitrate compound for nitrogen; sulfate compounds for sulfur; and manures, green residues and other organic materials for all the fertility value these can add to the soils.
These soil treatments will all serve to feed a single crop which may well be grown continuously if these soil treatments feed it better than they feed any other crop, including weeds. Unfortunately, we have long been turning our crops out to rustle for themselves. We are not yet able to feed any one crop well enough in one place to grow it continuously, and are, therefore, not able to feed a series of crops in succession or in a rotation on the same soil. Mr. Evans is learning to keep no more than two major crops in rotation fed well enough to reduce the troubles with fungi, insects, etc., as hindrance to his keeping his crops more healthy.
At the same time that those crops are building protection for themselves in their own proteins, they are delivering more of these within their forages for better nutrition, better protection against disease and better reproduction of the animals feeding on them, as Mr. Evans’ experience testifies.
It is these organic compounds, namely proteins (not carbohydrates and fats), which (a) carry life or growth, (b) protect against diseases as invasions by foreign proteins, and (c) reproduce the species. They are so complex in chemical make-up that plants producing them are now suggesting, according to recent facts, that they must have organic compounds as starter fertilizers from which to synthesize or create them.
Plants on wholly inorganic fertilizers can scarcely be expected to create all the organic chemical complexities of these elaborate proteins during a single growing season unless they are fed by the soil with some complex organic compounds like those put back in manures, for example.
“Organic” Fertility is Gradually Being Considered Along with the “Ash” Fertility
In depending on grass because of its erroneously assigned reputation, Mr. Evans found himself led astray by grassland propaganda which emphasizes grass but disregards the soil fertility under it. However, when he looked to the soil and managed its fertility, he found that grassland farming without attention to the soil was bunk as any crop farming is that expects mere faith in the species rather than both faith and work in the fertility of the soil to give the larger, more nutritious crop yields.
Now, that, for one hundred acres of crop land Mr. Evans has brought in annually 100 tons of dry matter in the 200 tons of manure resulting from the purchased feed; that tobacco stems high in potassium come on to the farm as litter; and that mineral fertilizers come in also for sheet composting in the fields; he finds that all this organic matter is coming in to build up the soil in that respect and is supplemented by inorganic fertility as a means of growing more of the organic fertility into the soil.
All of this really puts “life” into the soil. It starts more decomposition of the reserve minerals still left in the soil or of those applied. It gives more creative activities within the soil now expressing themselves in the tons of poultry protein in the more healthy birds Mr. Evans is harvesting and marketing as human food of possibly higher nutritional values.
Mr. Evans is simply telling us that when we propagandize the crop we must make certain that we consider the soil by the fertility of which alone that crop’s physiological activities can do for us what we expect from its creative, or biosynthetic, services in terms of proteins that grow animals and man and keep them healthy.
Crops don’t make the soil. Only soils of high fertility will feed the crops to feed us.
To believe that merely scattering grass seed is grassland farming, represents the bunk which Mr. Evans is emphasizing. It is bunk to believe that any kind of crop farming will succeed unless we feed the crop well by means of fertile soils suited or balanced so as to provide the crop’s need for its own complete nutrition.