Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
for the present population. No doubt our population will be larger in 30 years time,
but to grow all we need now is a difficult enough task.”
Our present achievement in agricultural productivity is the result of a single-
minded national policy since the 1940s to become more self-sufficient; a reaction to
the nightmare threat of starvation following the sinking of merchant shipping during
the war. Agriculture is now the victim of its own success. The suggestion today is
that 25 per cent of agricultural land will not be needed in the near future. In the 1989
Dimbleby lecture, HRH the Duke of Edinburgh expressed the changed position well:
“It is an irony that, with the help of financial incentives, the more industrialized coun-
tries are producing surpluses of food and steps are being taken to limit output, if only
for the time being.”
With such a revolutionary concept dominating our vision, it is difficult to recall
the concerns of the not too distant past. We no longer believe, as Sir Albert Howard
did in 1940, that we may be using up the inherited wealth of our soils in the same way
that we are exploiting fossil fuels. In
An Agricultural Testament
, he wrote “The res-
toration and maintenance of soil fertility has become a universal problem…the slow
poisoning of the life of the soil by artificial manures is one of the greatest calamities
which has befallen mankind.” Few people have taken so extreme a view as Howard
but many have wondered whether farmers were disregarding long-term husbandry in
the pursuit of short-term gains.
A run of unfavourable weather often shows up weaknesses in farming practice.
Farmers in the East Midlands may still remember their dismay at seeing fields of
ripening corn standing two feet deep in water after the torrential rains of July 1968.
Such a disaster may be considered an act of God but the crop failures in 1969 were
widely interpreted as the result of human error - of pushing land beyond its capab-
ility. As a result, the Agricultural Advisory Council was asked to undertake an ur-
gent enquiry as to whether “the inherent fertility of the soil was being eroded and the
fundamental structure of the soil damaged beyond repair”. More specifically, public
concern centred around the increasing use of heavy machinery, the long-term effects
of continuous cereal growing, the effects of pesticides upon beneficial soil organisms
(and wild life), and soil erosion.
As in so many other spheres of life, it is the increasing pace of change that cre-
ates uncertainty and concern. We now have little time to assess the effects of one in-
novation before it is overtaken by another. Winning food from the soil has been an un-
certain business for most of agricultural history so the tried and tested methods of the
past were usually the best. We can recognize some significant changes in cultivation
practice over the centuries but these were the exception rather than the rule. Some in-
novations reflected social patterns, such as village settlements and the availability of
