A large part of the Acres U.S.A. mission is to preserve and promote the wisdom of those who came before us. Prof. William Albrecht was such a visionary. A collection of his papers was the first publishing entry toward this mission, that book being The Albrecht Papers.

Charles Walters, our founder and longtime editor — and my father — sought out Dr. Albrecht not knowing what lessons were there to be learned. The name Albrecht appeared in journals around the world, yet officials at the University of Missouri where the retired professor kept an office discouraged a meeting citing his age, poor hearing, and the like. Charles Walters visited anyway. What came from these meetings, which soon grew into weekly sessions, was a mentor/student dialogue. Albrecht, ever the patient pedagogue, dispensed the logic, elegance and simplicity of his agricultural systems to an eager mind. And Charles Walters, the publisher and writer, picked up the charge and spread the timeless wisdom of William Albrecht around the world to a new generation of farmers and agronomists.

It’s hard to say whether Dr. Albrecht’s work would have found its way to light through the efforts of others or if without the republication of Albrecht’s papers they would have remained just that, papers to eventually fall into the dustbin of history.

Four volumes of The Albrecht Papers eventually came forth. Each had a style and character of its own and each brought new lessons from the master soil scientist to life, but only the most disciplined students of the soil tended to seek out and study these dense works.

Late in his career, semi-retired and legally blind, Charles Walters undertook the Herculean task of reading and sorting the hundreds of remaining papers and articles in Albrecht’s archives. He completed that task a few years before his death in 2009. What was left to accomplish was the monumental task of converting damaged and faded copies of articles, some 80 years old, into formats compatible with modern publishing and readable by all.

From file cabinets full of faded photocopies came forth several new volumes of The Albrecht Papers, each with a specific focus and theme. It is our goal to produce these works in a timely fashion. In your hands is the beautiful collaboration of the visionary research of Professor William Albrecht and the deft editorial eye of Charles Walters. We hope you enjoy this new creation of William Albrecht and Charles Walters.

— Fred C. Walters