Synopses & Reviews
Mr. Faulkner’s masterpiece is recognized as the most important challenge to agricultural orthodoxy that has been advanced in this century. Its new philosophy of the soil, based on proven principles and completely opposed to age-old concepts, has had a strong impact upon theories of cultivation around the world. It was on July 5, 1943, when Plowman’s Folly was first issued, that the author startled a lethargic public, long bemused by the apparently insoluble problem of soil depletion, by saying, simply, “The fact is that no one has ever advanced a scientific reason for plowing.” With the key sentence, he opened a new era.For generations, our reasoning about the management of the soil has rested upon the use of the moldboard plow. Mr. Faulkner proved rather conclusively that soil impoverishment, erosion, decreasing crop yields, and many of the adverse effects following droughts or periods of excessive rainfall could be traced directly to the practice of plowing natural fertilizers deep into the soil. Through his own test-plot and field-scale experiments, in which he prepared the soil with a disk harrow, in emulation of nature’s way on the forest floor and in the natural meadow, by incorporating green manures into its surface, he transformed ordinary, even inferior, soils into extremely productive, high-yield croplands.Time magazine called this concept “one of the most revolutionary ideas in agriculture history.” The volume is being made available again not only because farmers, ranchers, gardeners, and agriculturists demanded it, but also because it details the kind of “revolution” which will aid those searching for the fruits of the earth in the emerging nations.
Review
"Probably no book on an agricultural subject has ever prompted so much discussion in this country."--
Louis Bromfield in
The Reader's DigestSynopsis
When
Plowman’s Folly was first issued in 1943, Edward H. Faulkner startled a lethargic public, long bemused by the apparently insoluble problem of soil depletion, by saying, simply, “The fact is that no one has ever advanced a scientific reason for plowing.” With that key sentence, he opened a new era.
Synopsis
It may be an overstatement to say that this book changed the face of American agriculture, but it comes very close to the truth. In the third of a century since its original publication the disk harrow has largely replaced the moldboard plow in agriculture. Mr. Faulkner's once startling, heretical doctrine-that the organic stuff of a season's crops should g back into the upper surfaces of the soil, not at the level of the plowsole of the almost universally used moldboard-has received widespread acceptance. "The fact is, said Mr. Faulkner, "that no one has ever advanced a scientific reason for plowing." With that key sentence he opened a new era in farming. He proved rather conclusively that soil impoverishment, erosion, decreasing crop yields, and many of the adverse effects following droughts or periods of excessive rainfall could be traced directly to the practice of plowing fertilizers deep into the soil. By incorporating green manures into the surface, he transformed ordinary even inferior, soils extremely productive, high-yield croplands. Plowman's Folly has gone through many printings in countries around the world-it is estimated that more than half a million copies have been printed. Time magazine called it "one of the most revolutionary ideas in agricultural history." "Here is indeed an unorthodox, and optimistic and a thought provoking book. . ." -New York Times. "An extraordinary phenomenon in American farm history. . . has been the furor over Edward H. Faulkner's Plowman's Folly. . ."-Harper's Magazine. Edward H. Faulkner lived in Elyria, Ohio, the scene of his epic experiments. He was a county agent in Kentucky and Ohio, a Smith-Hughes teacher of agriculture and a soil and crop investigator in private employment. He wrote several other books, including Soil Development and Uneasy Money, both published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Savoie Lottinville was director of the University of Oklahoma Press when Plowman's Folly was originally published.