Soil is not dirt. Dirt is something your mother sweeps off the kitchen floor. Soil is what you farm. And that may sound trite or insignificant, but it's probably one of the most important things that we want to convey: not all soils are created equal, and not all dirt is soil. And certainly not all soil is dirt.

The reality is—no farmer would ever knowingly hurt his soil. The soil on the farm really isn’t his. God created this Earth. He made it perfect. It says so in Genesis, that God made the Earth perfect in six days and rested on the seventh day. Man has taken it away from that perfect state. Now, this hasn’t necessarily been done intentionally, but in the end it doesn’t matter if it was intentional or not. The end result is that we have much less perfect soil today. It certainly isn’t as good as what our father or grandfather were farming with years ago. It has been a slow degradation over time.

A Simpler World: Agronomy Prior to World War II

It’s really something to think about—that most of the damage to our soils has happened in my lifetime, since 1945. This is when many of the products we currently depend on—chemicals, fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, bacticides—appeared on the market and were ushered in to bring about a new dawn of more productive agriculture. 

About twenty years ago, I met a fellow citrus grower by the name of Gilbert Bowen. Gilbert and I talked a lot about his experience in the Florida citrus orchards. Gilbert had been working in the industry in central Florida since the 1930s. And he told me, ‘George, when I was a boy, we only had four items in our agronomy program. We didn’t use man-made fertilizers, we didn’t have manure, we didn’t have compost.’ 

You see, back in those days they grew alfalfa as a permanent cover crop between the trees, which of course is a legume. This was their way of getting nitrogen into the soil. Legumes fix nitrogen from the air, and that was how they were supplementing their soil. And guess what’s becoming more popular in the Midwest over the past five to ten years? Cover crops. They’re God’s way, the natural way, to help increase the fertility of our soils. 

The second element they used was copper powder. Copper is one of the greatest fungicides on Earth. But copper is not selective. Copper kills both the good and bad bugs. Today in agriculture, our fungicides are typically a lot more targeted. It's similar to the relationship between penicillin and today’s more targeted antibiotics for human use. 

Third, they had sulfur dust, which was used as an insecticide. And the fourth item in their agronomy kit prior to World War Two was a petroleum-based spray oil, which they used as a foliar treatment. Basically, the oil would smother any bugs on the trees. That’s it. That was the entire agronomy program for citrus prior to World War Two. 

The Dawn of Synthetic Fertilizers

Man-made ammonia-based nitrogen fertilizers came into prominence after World War Two. The first time it was ever synthesized from the air, which is seventy-eight percent nitrogen, was in 1905. Two German chemists—Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch—were responsible for identifying and refining this process. 

From FCLG: Haber and Bosch officially demonstrated the Haber Process for scrutiny by the scientific community in 1909. By 1910, the chemists, backed by BASF, had scaled their technique from their tabletop machine to industrial production. By 1914, BASF’s Oppau manufacturing plant was producing 20 tons of fertilizer per day.

Haber and Bosch were awarded Nobel Prizes for their discoveries. Now, here’s the funny part of the story: Up until this point, one of the Germans’ main sources for nitric acid was bat guano, specifically from Chile. The Germans were already concerned about the amount of nitrates available for future use at the turn of the century, and then, with the prospect of war on the horizon, Britain blockaded the Germans’ supply of guano. In addition to its use as a fertilizer, Haber and Bosch’s man-made nitrate was used to make munitions for Germany in World War One.

Today: A Slow Shift in Farming Practices

But our current soil health is not just a product of man-made fertilizers and chemicals. In the Bible, God said that we should let our fields lay fallow one year in seven; that was actually directed in scripture to the Israelites. They were told, in the seventh year, you did not go out and harvest. That was a way of letting it rest. So one time I challenged some growers, friends of mine, with this question: How many of us have ever done that? Or how many of us would even consider doing something like that? This idea seems completely foreign to us. 

In the last eight to ten years, there’s been more emphasis on so-called going green or being more organic, or now even using the term ‘regenerative’. It’s fine to have more words to talk about our farming operations, but in essence, we actually need to be better stewards of our soil than we have been. I think some of us have seen a shift—a small shift—in the thought patterns surrounding traditional farming. Most farmers are still farming the way that pappy and grandpappy did it. But I think the 30-somethings out there right now are taking a much harder look at how they should be farming, which is absolutely great. 

It’s still a huge problem, though. We have one hundred million acres of corn, seventy-five million acres of soybeans, and fifty million acres of wheat grown every year in the United States with synthetic fertilizers such as anhydrous ammonia and other chemicals. 

Looking Ahead: Aspects of Soil Fertility

As you’ve read, George believes most of all that we must work with nature to see long-term success in farming. There’s more to discover in George’s next article, where here discusses the facets of soil fertility and what our soils really need to support a healthy and profitable farming system.