Man is Dependent on Foods Synthesized by Life Forms Below Him

Man is at the top of the biotic pyramid. Immediately below him are his animals; just below them are the plants; then below them are the microbes; and finally below all of these is the foundation of all life, namely the soil, Located at the top, as man is, we are interested in what happens in all the life forms below us. Man depends on the animals as the gathering, assembling and synthesizing helps in providing his food.

By means of his animals he can feed, as it were, over more extensive areas of different soils. He brings together the different required nutrient elements from wider sources and has them manufactured into his foods by other body agencies physiologically similar to his own.

Man is one life form that cannot be nourished by taking the separated or simple elemental forms composing his food. This must be passed to him in the form of the more complex compounds. The animal is an agent in performing that service of building it more nearly of the particular complexity as he needs it. The animal, in turn, depends on the grass, which synthesizes from the simple elements, the compounds that feed the animal.

Man is engaged in a strenuous struggle for his foods. He is using the help of the animals, the help of the plants, and the help of the microbes. All of these bring from the soil the simple but essential elements of inorganic origin to be compounded with those from the air and water to be his organic food.

Energy Foods for Fattening Service

Food serves us in two major functions. The first of these, which stands out more prominently and has been more commonly emphasized, is the provision of energy. Food serves in supplying the necessary calories, and in the storage of energy laid away on the body as fat.

In the human species, there are body differences too in the different soil areas in the United States. Perhaps you do not look at folks as a judge of their body forms much as a performance in judging livestock. But have you not seen crowds in which the prevalence of obesity, corpulence, rounded, massive, body lines and accompanying characters suggested the slang term “corn-fed” as fitting description?

Have you not seen groups of folks in other parts of the country where you considered it appropriate description to speak of “the slim, trim boyish figure” and where the speech was slow and musical? Do you perchance see in the face the register of the development of the skull indicating the poorer or better nutrition from the soil areas over which the individual has roamed?

When we are nourished by foods that supply mainly energy, mainly bulk, then some of the body characters become irregularities, if not even deficiencies with damage.

Fattening the animal has been a prominent one among the agricultural practices and feeds have been considered mainly for that service by them. Too little attention has been given the service by feeds and foods in growing a body so that it can use energy feeds and that it can carry on reproduction of its own kind.

Protein Foods for Body-Building

Foods must serve another function, namely they must grow the body. This function is not secondary, but primary, in importance. One must construct the furnace before we can burn the fuel in it. One cannot grow a body by means of energy foods only, such as starches, sugars and other carbohydrates. Bodies are built of proteins, mineral and organo-mineral compounds.

Dairy feeds to supply proteins are a problem because our crops that synthesize proteins more prominently, such as the legumes, require a generous supply of fertility from the soil. They have not grown successfully everywhere. Protein production is a struggle for the plant just as it is a problem for the feeder of animals to provide it for his herds and flocks.

Getting its protein in the case of the plant means that as a forage it is rich in “grow” food values. It means that later in its growing season this highly elaborated food constituent is assembled out of the plant body and concentrated in the seed. It means that reproduction by the plant is favored since that process depends on protein.

Merely more clay put into the pure sand, even though the clay was very acid, protected the plants from fungus attack (right), while those grown in mainly sand (left) were harmed badly. (Photo by Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station.)

Protein production, therefore, unlike the production of carbohydrates, which are made mainly from air and water, is possible only when the soils are fertile, and when the fertility helps the plants to convert their carbohydrates into proteins and all else that means growth. The struggle for proteins is universal. It means a struggle by man, by the animals, by the plants and by the microbes, all of which can get them only as the fertility coming from the soil to all these life forms makes their reproduction and growth possible.

The creation of any form of life, then, is possible only when the warm moist breath is blown into the handful of dust that is truly a fertile soil. All the requisite elements must be present there, lest we finish the creative process and have nothing but energy foods, carbohydrates or little more than warm air. We need to emphasize the soil fertility as the basis of protein synthesis.

This synthesis is the difficult part of our agricultural creative activities. It is becoming a problem of national and international scope with more implications than is commonly appreciated. Protein provision is more than a matter of purchasing it as a supplement. It is a matter of having the fertile soils to grow it as quality in the feed along with the bulk of it.

Climatic Forces Give Pattern to Soil Development

Perhaps you have never thought that the pattern of the climatic forces that develops our soils from the rocks is the pattern of our soils according as certain areas produce mainly carbonaceous crops with much bulk yield per acre, while another area produces mainly mineral-rich, proteinaceous crops less bulky.

If one looks at the map of the rainfall of the United States and omits the area west of the Coast Range, then the plant life, the animal life, and the agriculture take to a distinct pattern as one goes from the west to the east; that is, as one goes from almost no rainfall to the higher amounts of it in the east and the southeast.

The rainfall map gives the basis of the pattern of the fertility of our soils.

It is the water that breaks the rock down to form the clay and smaller rock fragments which compose the soil. The increasing rainfall in western United States means an increase in the clay and consequently there is more soil as the annual amount of rainfall goes higher in that area.

In the mid-continent, the soil contains a good amount of clay. The rock has been broken down and its losses have stocked the clay with these fertility elements held there in the exchangeable or available form. Plenty of calcium or lime and other fertility is left in the soil to grow legumes, to fix nitrogen, to make the soil black, and to granulate it to a good depth as we think of it in the more fertile “prairie” soils.

It was those “prairie” soils that grew grass and not forests. Those grasses were good pasture for the American bison. As a consequence we may mistakenly believe that grasses anywhere are good feed crops to make bone and brawn as they did for the buffalo.

But grasses are good feed crops only when they grow on soils equally as fertile as those chosen by the buffalo. The buffalo did not crowd into the eastern limits of the prairie where annually much more bulk of grass was produced. Quite the opposite, he stayed on the soils that were under lower amounts of annual rainfall; were richer in calcium or lime; and were therefore richer in nitrogen and and all else of fertility that encouraged growth of more protein and less of carbohydrates. He selected his feed according to its nutritional quality and not its quantity.

Where the rainfall is more than 100 percent of the evaporation, the soils are highly leached of their fertility. The relatively low ratios of the Cornbelt suggest that it has its higher rainfall during the growing season but yet has soils not excessively leached. (Map by Prof. Transeau, Ohio State University.)

In the eastern half of the United States with annual rainfall of 40 inches or more, the rocks have not only been broken down to form much clay, but so much rain has fallen to go down through the soil to leach the available or exchangeable nutrients off the clay and to leave the clay fraction of an acid reaction. The soil is not only acid, but so much woody or carbonaceous vegetation grows that it adds much carbonic acid to the soil by decay and is keeping the soils in the northern half of the eastern United States in that acid condition.

Adding the higher temperatures to the higher rainfalls in the southeastern states breaks the rocks down more completely and forms a different clay. It is one that doesn’t even hold the acid or the hydrogen; much less will it hold fertility in the form of calcium, magnesium, potassium and the other elements commonly held on the clays under lower temperatures farther north.

The soils of the South are not so acid then. Unfortunately, they are not so fertile either, since if they will not hold much acid or hydrogen, they will not hold other elements having the same electrical charge and being plant nutrients which the hydrogen is not.

Soil Map of the United States and Curve of Soil Development. Soils in the west are under construction, while those in the east are under destruction in terms of production of protein-rich crops and body-building feeds and foods.

Soil Fertility Controls the Economics

Fortunately for the central states, much of the rainfall comes in the summer when there is also much evaporation, encouraged particularly by the winds blowing from the Southwest. As a consequence, there is rainfall to break down the rock. But instead of it going down through the soil to carry the dissolved rock products away, the water evaporates to leave them held by the clay in the soil. Thus the soils of the Cornbelt were made more fertile than many others with no more rainfall but with less evaporation.

It is the differences in the climate within the United States that makes the soils in the west different from those in the east. In the latter they are different in the north from those in the south. We have a west and an east then because the crops, animals, and peoples differ accordingly as the soils feed them differently We also have a north and a south for the same reason.

If we look at our pork production, this fat-supplying animal power is in the region of the more leached soils. It is on the so-called acid soils which grow mainly carbohydrates and fuel values.

It is on these soils where protein supplements are a problem to the point of their being rationed in wartime. If one goes South there is cotton production and sugar production, but there is animal production only with many troubles accompanying it.

These differences in agricultural production are apt to be considered by some folks as due to differences in the economics. Yes, it is more economical to produce protein where the fertility of the soil is sufficient to do it “naturally”. Yes, conversely it is less economical to produce proteins where the fertility of the soil is so low that mainly sugar and fiber crops are the natural output by it. Beneath what may be called economics are the great natural forces of creation that control even the economics.

It is wise then, or good economics, to know the fertility of the soil we are using for production of only carbohydrates to be sold as bulk, or of both carbohydrates and proteins, the latter of which demands more soil fertility for its basic services in reproduction or multiplication of the living things which agriculture creates.

Virgin Vegetation and the Soil Fertility Pattern

One needs only to recall where the virgin forests were and where the grassy prairies were, to be reminded that there was a reflection of the soil fertility pattern by the virgin vegetation. The forested soils of the eastern and southeastern states were so highly leached already then that the Creator himself could make only wood. This was possible only because the trees were putting back to the soil much of their used and reused fertility in their annual drop of leaves.

Forest soils now cleared for agriculture can scarcely be producers of protein, much less so after we have burned out by cultivation the humus residues originally left by the forests. It is those soils that can be acres for catching sunshine, fresh air and rainfall for assembling calorie values for us in fruits, sugars, vegetable oils and other fuel foods. Unfortunately, for good nourishment of man and beast, we need more than acres of soil. We need depth of it and much more do we need fertility in it to make proteins as well as carbohydrates.

Beef production concentrates itself on the soils where lime in the soil and its protein-producing power make it possible for this high protein food to be synthesized.

Agricultural Crops Fit into the Climatic Pattern of Soil Fertility

Not only the virgin vegetation but also the agricultural crops in the United States divide themselves into those rich in minerals and proteins growing on the less weathered soils in the western states, and those poor in minerals and protein — therefore high in carbohydrates — in the eastern and southern states.

We have a “harder” wheat, one higher in gluten as its protein, as one goes west from the Cornbelt. We once had hard wheat in the eastern states when the Geneseo River valley was the “bread basket” of this country. But with the exploitation of our soil fertility, our wheat goes soft.

Hog production is concentrated in the cornbelt where the soil fertility encourages the crops to synthesize starch and its fattening values for mature animals more abundantly than the complete proteins for body-growing values of younger animals. (Map by courtesy of American Meat Institute.)

One needs only to study the wheat of Kansas, which, in 1940, contained 10 percent of protein if grown in the eastern or wetter part of the state, but had increasing concentrations of protein going as high as 18 percent of protein in western or drier Kansas.

Only recently have we come to see that it is not the low rainfall directly that makes hard wheat, or the high rainfall directly that makes soft wheat. We have learned that it is the fertility of the soil still left in the areas of low rainfall to make proteins, and washed out of the soil to make it impossible to synthesize proteins but still possible to make carbohydrates in areas of higher rainfall.

Since the lime goes out of the soil relatively much faster than the potassium under the climatic forces, it is this particular change in the ratio of calcium to the potassium, and changes in other ratios also, that brings changes in the food-synthesizing activities by the plants.

In this fact we have the basic principle underlying the different compositions, not only of the different kinds of plants on different soils, as illustrated by the forest trees in contrast to the prairie grasses, but also of differences within a single species, as illustrated by the differences in concentration of protein in wheat varying from 9 to 18 percent from Missouri to western Kansas.

Here then in the differences in the fertility of the soil as developed by the climatic forces, and not in the differences in the rainfall and temperature themselves, is the reason why the plants within a single species may look alike but yet be widely different in their services either as “grow” foods or as “go” foods.

Animals Balance Their Own Diets

When in the pasture of mixed herbages, we find the cow grazing some plant species closely while she allows others to grow tall, we may well believe that she is demonstrating her capacity to balance her own ration. She is probably balancing the protein in the clover against the carbohydrates in the bluegrass. She is carrying out her selections just as far as our confinement of her inside the fence and our inclusion of different herbages in the pasture permits.

If the fertility in the pasture soil has declined seriously, she reaches through the fence — or breaks through it — on to the highway or railroad right-of-way for the grass growing there where the soil has not been depleted through crop removal. On the soils of the Coastal Plains of the southeast she is on the highway grazing right along the edge of the concrete roadbed to get the more proteinaceous herbage growing on that strip of soil that is saturated by calcium and other fertility coming from the concrete.

Pastures Should Consider Soil Fertility and the Physiology of the Cow

In attempting to manage the seasonal grazing program by providing the crop successions that give rye in the early spring, sweet clover next in order, bluegrass later, lespedeza after that, and so on through until the end of the season, we are forgetting that the cow is not a substitute for the mowing machine.

Pasturing is a matter that must consider the physiological performances by the soil fertility within the plants so that this forage output by the soil satisfies the physiological demands by the cow. She too is in the business of creation with a natural instinct to know the creative help she can expect from the handful of dust on which she depends for this.

Much as our cattle select their particular grazing areas in accordance with the fertility of the soil, so does the selection of plants by fungi and insects for attack and destruction suggest a correlation between these behaviors by different lower life forms and the fertility of the soil growing their victims in question. Careful observation of fungus attacks on soybeans growing on soils differently treated suggests that the attacks are made on plants that are low in lime and unable to build the protein for their own protection.

Another study suggested still more strongly that the insect, known as thrips, was attacking the spinach plants according as they were growing on soils low in either calcium or nitrogen, the two nutrient elements associated with protein production by the plants.

Such demonstrations suggest that, for the plants like for the humans, it is the protein that is protection against microbial invasions and even against insect attacks. We protect ourselves against disease by means of certain protein compounds — some injected directly into the blood stream. We call on the proteins for just such help when we cure tuberculosis by rest and a high-protein diet.

Conversely, then, can we not consider that the increasing disease, whether originating in deficiencies or in microbial attacks, is merely telling us that we are being given less of the kind of protection that must be built from the ground up? Isn’t it possible that the decline of the soil fertility — for protein production — is registering its effects in the increasing problems of bad health and disease in both animals and humans?

Hogs demonstrated their ability as judges of the quality of the corn grain when they went through this 40 acre field and hogged down first the corner where the soil had been treated to make alfalfa growth possible. (Photo by Virgil Burk, Columbia, Missouri.)

Soil Fertility Controls Animal Nutrition

In order to give partial answer to the question of how far the soil fertility controls animal nutrition, three lots of seven lambs each were fed on soybean hay for a period of time followed by the feeding of lespedeza hay. Each of these hays was grown on three plots, given the following soil treatments, (a) none, (b) phosphate, and (c) lime and phosphate.

In addition to these differences in growth, there were wide differences in the quantity of their wool. Those sheep fed the hay from limed land produced a wool that scoured well, carded nicely, and came through as excellent fibers. Such was not the case with the wool from the sheep fed the hays from the soils not limed. Then too the lambs that had been fed hays grown on the soils given lime and phosphate were ready to be bred by the next autumn, but the others were not.

Here are significant effects, namely the better reproductive powers premised on the better fertility of the soil. Truly the creative powers reside in the handful of dust.

We are coming to see that the big agricultural problem is one of understanding — and then managing — the productive powers of the soil. These powers are reflecting their decline in the increasing difficulties in raising our animals and in keeping them reproducing regularly at high levels of fecundity.

Quality of the Same Breed Varies with Different Soils

Perhaps you have not thought that soils are widely different within an area as limited as a state like Missouri. But in order to let the animals themselves demonstrate the fact that different soils grow different animals, even of the same breeding, ten lots of lespedeza hay were assembled from the five outlying experiment fields representing the five soil areas of Missouri. The hays represented each area with the soil given (a) no soil treatment, and (b) soil treatment, or a total of ten lots of hay.

Ten rabbits were fed on each lot only to find that the originally uniform group of 100 rabbits was changed to ten different groups. Each group now reflected the soil and the fertilizer treatment on which the hay had been grown. Here it was not the breed but the feed that determined the animal characteristics; that is, the appearance, the blood picture under test, the weight of their bones, the breaking strength of these, and other body and physiological characters not so commonly considered as under the control of the fertility of the soil growing the feed.

The bones of our own bodies suggest that their qualities are correlated with the quality of the soils growing our foods. This may seem to be a stretch of the imagination. However, if we consider the teeth as an exposed part of our skeleton, and if we use the data of the condition of the young men of the nation as revealed by the inductees into the Navy, the numbers of cavities of our teeth reflect the climatic pattern of soil fertility.

Those inducted from the mid-continental belt along the Mississippi river, that had the prairie grasses and the soil fertility with pronounced protein-producing power in it, had the lowest number of cavities in the teeth per individual. In going east or in going west from the soils of this area and its more pronounced fertility, there was an increase in the numbers of cavities and fillings per mouth of the young men taken into the Navy, as reported for some 70,000.

CURVES OF GROWTH OF SHEEP

Experimental trials with lambs demonstrated that even though they consumed the same amounts of lespedeza hay per head per day, they made more growth according as the soils growing the hay were given more fertility treatments. (Photo courtesy Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station.)

Soil Fertility Pattern and the International Food Problem

The pattern of soil development and its corresponding fertility pattern is larger than a national pattern. It may be one that will be helpful in seeing the pattern of soil fertility and the quality of food as basic to the present food problem of the world.

One needs only to look at the soil map of the world and search out the soil areas similar to ours that produce the proteins in the wheat and the meat as we have them in the United States. When one finds that these soil areas are located in the Soviet Republic, and in the outlying dominions of Great Britain, one can find good suggestion why these countries, along with the United States, are the present major world powers.

We can also understand why Japan went into North China (into South China only under war), Mussolini went into North Africa, and Hitler wanted to go east into the Ukraine of the Soviet Republic. When the leaders of their respective countries did not have the necessary fertility resources to produce the foods that truly satisfy, might we not anticipate their military movements in certain particular directions under compulsion of the force of hunger?

Perhaps we can see the present world problem not as one provoked by politicians, but rather as one of an exhausted fertility and thereby one of producing food that does more than deliver calories.

Perhaps we can project into the future to see our own own problems as threatening duplications of those of the Old World, and realize very soon how significant the conservation of the soil and its fertility is in preserving our own freedom and democracy.

These much-mentioned characters of a well governed group of people cannot be imposed on the hungry group. They must be inherent in the group because of the contentment that comes with the security of better food and which cannot be supplied except by ample fertile soil.

Soil treatment for the growth of lespedeza hay brought about a decidedly better growth of the rabbits, and bigger size and strength in their bones. (Photo by Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station.)

SOIL MAP OF THE WORLD

By using the soils of the United States as a guide, it is evident that the soils of the world similar to our hard wheat and beef area are limited and in control of mainly the “Three Powers”.