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  FERTILE soil grows good grasses and crops, which in turn feed and make healthy animals. The products from these things are the dominating factors in the health of the community. Poor soil grows poor grass, poor crops and animals, and these have a detrimental effect on the health of the people.

  The vast difference in the flavour of salad vegetables grown on fertile and infertile soil should have been noted by everyone. The products of fertile soil sustain healthful life. The growth from poor soil is only suited to be again absorbed into the soil to help cure the ills of the soil.

  The good farmer, by cherishing and improving the fertility of his own particular soil, is safeguarding the basic factors of the health and prosperity of every section of any community. At the same time he is in the first line of the general fight against disease.

  Fertile soil is the basic factor in the health of the community. It is also of the greatest importance to the safety of all the land; it resists to an astounding degree the forces of soil erosion.

  There are many other causes of soil erosion than those which may originate from the actions of our few generations of farmers and graziers. While no one generation of farmers caused a significant amount of soil erosion, the accumulation of soil damages from past generations have manifested themselves in greater soil movements in this last generation. The forces of erosion are accelerating.

  Whenever run-off water is artificially concentrated, an erosion hazard is created. The damages from public roads and other sources completely outside the responsibility of the farmers and graziers cause widespread erosions on the farmers' own lands. Government stock routes and forests are not free from erosion. A bushfire from any cause is always a hazard. A careless camper, a cigarette from a motorist, a spark from a railway engine-all are serious in accelerating soil erosion.

  There is, however, no doubt that concerted actions by the community of farmers and graziers could do more in much less time to stop erosion and the shockingly devastating floods, than all the authorities concerned, even with unlimited money.

  It would take at least two years for the various authorities who would be concerned to agree on any plan. The work could have been completed by the farmers in that time. They would incidentally have increased the value of their land and made additional profit.

  To be quite specific, if the Keyline plan was adopted by the farmers and graziers of the Hunter River Valley, the result would be certain and rapid.

  Every farmer and grazier would enrich himself greatly by the resulting increased value of his land and the better quality of his farm yields. The whole of the Hunter River and its eroding banks and flats would be, protected by the farmer's work on his own land. Devastating floods would not occur again at such important population centres as Maitland or any other town on the river. Clear water would flow in the river all the year round and the flow would be more even and constant.

  If we assume that the ancient flow of generally clearer water was compatible with the early better anchorages in Newcastle Harbour, may not a new flow of cleaner water result in gradually clearing the harbour, instead of the present continually increasing depositions of silt? Would not a constantly greater flow of cleaner water result in the removal of recently deposited silt from the lower reaches of the river?

  All the huge water conservation projects and all the special dams for flood mitigation will not hold as much water as the land itself if all the soil is kept in a condition to absorb the rain when it comes. Dams for flood control are effective if they remain only partly filled, so that large potential storage is always available to act as huge shock absorbers for the floods.

  To this new vast water storage capacity of the soil we must add the effect to be obtained from the Keyline dams, the High Contour dams and the others discussed in this book.

  These dams, constructed as they are for use whenever required, with their pipe and valve outlets to provide water at the turn of a large tap, will form a tremendous buffer against floods. The conserved water is second only in low cost irrigation to the rain itself. The Australian drought-breaking flooding rains will then find a huge capacity in the farmers' dams ready to offset their intensity and destructive force. The drought will surely have warranted the use of the water of these dams and their capacity will be available for the flood rains.

  From geological evidence it is apparent that floods did occur before the farming and grazing practices of our few generations of farmers greatly reduced the capacity of the land to absorb rainfall and retard the sudden flood. It is just as apparent that no rains of recent decades should have caused so much destruction. In this geological age of lower rainfall and drier conditions, every drop of water, including the rains that now cause our floods, should and could be used in the production of better soil. The soil would probably be better than that which previously existed in the Hunter River Valley.

  These remarks are not a suggestion that the Keyline plan will in effect put the clock back one hundred and fifty years, nor is it suggested that the valleys and streams of this important river watershed will revert to their former state as regards the cleanness of the river flow and the reduction of the quick destroying flood. No! Much more than this is feasible. The whole of the land will rapidly become more fertile and absorbent than it ever was. The heights which the floods reached one hundred and fifty years ago, which were perhaps much less than those of to-day, would probably not be reached again.

  There is no doubt that, at the moment, great flood dangers exist. There is also no doubt that projects of a national character in the construction of many flood control structures would greatly mitigate the danger of the big floods.

  These works cost sums of money that to the ordinary mind are quite fantastic. They require for their finance a toll on the whole of the community. They cover with water large areas of very valuable land.

  From a practical business point of view, where is the flood control problem, or any other problem for that matter, if a highly profitable solution is found!

  Against the Keyline picture of almost absolute control, we have the ever-present menace of the big flood with something much more than a possibility that a flood larger than the previous worst one could occur at any time with little warning. The only other hope of protection, which lies in the very remote future, is the construction of fabulously costly Government projected flood control dams. If and when sufficient of these are constructed they would not have as great a combined water storage capacity as that which can be had at very little cost in the soil itself by Keyline Absorption-fertility.

  The reason why soil erosion control or soil conservation has not been accepted by a very large percentage of land owners is simply that these matters are not always good business. Too often it is something to be attempted reluctantly and postponed very easily. The approach is negative, the cost real, and the profit remote.

  The phrase "Prevent erosion and save the soil that is left" lacks inspiration.

  Why not, as far as the farmer and grazier is concerned, forget erosion.

  Instead, build better soil structure, improve soil fertility, make, manufacture and create deeper, more fertile soil just by providing soil with the capacity to absorb fertility. If a sheet eroded area or an erosion gully is in the path of the better soil drive, convert it; engulf it in the waves of fertility.

  If a Shire Council or the Main Roads' Board is causing large quantities of water to be diverted on to the farmer's land, thereby causing destruction, diffuse it, disperse it, absorb and conserve it in dams. It may be dirty water, but it is water. It is the greatest factor, as far as the average Australian farmer is concerned, in fertile soil development and better yield.

  The failure generally to treat agriculture in its entirety by sectionalising and subsectionalising too much with inadequate means of proper coordination has led to a completely unnatural and artificial basic approach to land matters. The soil has been lost looking for the crop. The land is being lost while only three or four inches of topsoil is used. Improving and progressively increasing the depth of the soil is the first basis of any permanent yield improvement. Any and all other means of improvement may then logically follow.

  Absorption-fertility is real fertility. It is not doctored nor drugged soil.

  It is the great privilege and responsibility of the farmer to give himself, his family and the community the benefit in health and wellbeing to which they are entitled from The Fertile Soil.