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   The foundation trio of a healthy environment is clean air, good water and fertile soils. These are the inseparables and the essentials.

   Soil is a science of its own and a part of a lot of other sciences; so it is fortunate that it is not necessary to know all about soil in order to develop it and to use it. Few good gardeners have degrees in soil science, but they know how to make soil deeper and more fertile.

   Soil may be considered as the conversion of rock by two processes. One is a process of ageing, the other is a process of living.

   The ageing process is the disintegration of rock to dust and the mixings, the combinings, and the transformings through so many aeons of time. Eventually the surface of the land was little bits of everything from everywhere.

   For a long time the earth remained in this state; then there was a great change. The living process started and covered and steadied the restless dust: the living soil was created. But there were ripples and wave motions, and great thunders from below to disturb the steadied dust; the soil was covered up and new soil was recreated many times. The evidence of past rain forests and wet lands is there in the coal seams which are mined now.

   The result today is a thin covering of soil which, together with the sea, supports the life of the earth. This top-soil is underlaid by the great reserves of rock debris and soft rock--the dead subsoil. together they are from a few times to a hundred times or more thicker than the soil itself. This sub-soil, or soil material, is of great importance. It is the foundation of life now and for the future. Firstly, it can be turned into real soil quickly, and secondly, there are these immense quantities of it almost everywhere beneath the surface of agricultural land. This is the type of land on which cities are built.

   This is how soil is formed. The ageing process of soil formation has taken unknown millions of years. But the point is, IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED! THE LIVING PROCESS IS RAPID. These are the simple facts which the propagandists of anti-landscape artificial agriculture want all mankind to forget. The living process is very rapid. It merely has to convert the sub-soil into fertile soil. The length of time that this takes is related to the life cycles of the life in the soil. This includes even the most minute forms. There are many books dealing with this one aspect in the study of the microbiology of the soil. There are millions of organisms in an ounce of fertile soil and they breed, die and breed again in a matter of days or even hours. There are other larger forms of life in the soil which are part of the process. The animal life in the soil runs to many hundreds of species. Of these the giant is the earthworm, which is not only the great animal friend of man but is also a completely reliable soil informant. If a spadeful or two of soil discloses several sizes of earthworms ranging to seven inches long, then the soil is fertile.

   The living process has been going on for a long time. Some soils are thousands or even millions of years old. Soil is a process which has been maintained by countless generations of organisms which have only brief individual life spans. Even the earthworm, our friendly giant of the life in the soil, breeds in two to three months after hatching from egg capsules which may produce 20 live worms. Hereafter this hermaphrodite breeds almost weekly in good soil. An acre of fertile soil will contain a ton or more of earthworms. Each will excrete everyday more than its own weight of humus-laden casts.

   The soil is a complete universe. It has varying inhabitants which occupy specific atmospheres. There is the world of the aerobes which breathe air, and the world of the anaerobes which do not breathe air--they extract their oxygen from matter in the earth. The soil has climates (soil climates) of great diversity. The size of the populations of the soil (soil life) is fantastic. To try to assess the numbers of all these multitudes would be like trying to express light years in inches.

   All forms of life require two things for optimum development; good living conditions, which embrace air (oxygen), moisture, warmth and space, and a plentiful supply of suitable food. Then they breed like hell--what else is there to do? This a soil climax. Multiple soil climaxes can be promoted to make soil quickly.

   It has been found that the best and cheapest food of all for soil making on the grand scale is the dead roots of good pasture. It it is known how to promote this special organic matter in abundance, successions of climaxes can be promoted. We can promote these breeding orgies in the soil and improve and deepen the soil rapidly.

   What is being said now is that if the living soil were stripped from a paddock, the sub-soil material below could be turned into a soil which would rival the original in only a few years.

   One of the most controversial aspects of my farm experience has been the subject of soil. Briefly, the claim was that soil could be made deeper and more fertile--quickly. We had done it originally on poor top-soil, on sub-soil clay, on yellow shale, on the harder blue shales and on thin sandstone soil.

   This is the simple technique that succeeded where orthodox methods had failed to produce even a poor pasture: we broke the soil material to three inches deep with a chisel plow--the modern equivalent of the ancient stick-plow. Into this we sowed a mixture of clovers (with the appropriate innoculants) and grasses with one hundred-weight of a 50-50 lime-superphosphate mixture to each acre. The pasture that resulted was cultivated likewise with a chisel plow in the autumn of each of the next three years only. (The particular attributes of the chisel plow are that it does not turn the soil under and secondly, it is a tough go-anywhere affair. It has two-inch wide chisel-like tynes attached to heavier spring-loaded steel shanks mounted on a steel frame. Its proper use on pasture land aerates the soil. The effect on soil improvement and pasture can be dramatic. There is a chisel plow which bears the name Yeomans, in which our financial interest ceased years ago. Our first version of the chisel plow was made in 1945.) The chisels were allowed to penetrate deeper into the earth in these three consecutive years, reaching a depth of six or seven inches in the final working. We were thus letting a great deal more air into the soil and making better use of the rainfall by taking more of it into the soil. During these three years, stock were managed in a way which encouraged the production of excessive quantities of pasture roots.

   The super-phosphates--a chemical fertiliser--was used to artificially stimulate the grasses and clovers to grow the initial crop of roots. It was not used again or for any other purpose.

   Generally by the time pasture plants have grown to near flowering stage, their roots will have penetrated as deeply into the soil as they will go. Supposing at this stage the grass is mown down or eaten off by stock, the grass suffers a severe shock. It is as if grass hated mowers and the sheep and cattle which tear-off and eat its leaves. The shock to the grass is very real. So firstly, the grass must recover from the shock. It does this by not growing at all for a time and by drawing for its recovery on the nutrients stored in its roots. These nutrients were made ready for the great reproductive event in the cycle-of-life of the grass--the flowering and the setting of seed. These deeper roots then die and become in various ways the food for the whole universe of life in the soil.

   After recovery from the shock, completely new roots start downwards again. If a sod of grass is dug up at the right time and washed in water--gently--the base of the clump of grass seems to be infested with maggots. But they are not maggots; they are new roots starting on their way down again. If the grass is now left to grow undisturbed, by the exclusion of all stock from the paddock, these new roots will continue downwards to the maximum depth of the aerated top-soil. If the sub-soil has been aerated previously by a suitable cultivation with the chisel plow the roots would continue deeper into the newly aerated and moist sub-soil. On the other hand, if the grass is eaten before the roots have penetrated to the new optimum depth, the roots will immediately die back because the grass will have suffered another severe shock. The system of the constant nibble, where stock remain on pasture for long periods, is the system of the constant shock. It will progressively reduce the depth of the aerated and alive soil to two inches or even less.

   The farmer can thus ensure, by moving his stock on and off his pastures at appropriate times, that bigger and better crops of roots are produced from deeper root systems. Soil-life climaxes are heightened; and in the better living conditions--air, moisture, warmth and space--and a plentiful supply of suitable food, a frequency of climaxes is produced. In this manner shallow soil in which grass roots penetrate less than two inches, can be converted in three years into a very fertile soil five or ten times deeper. We have brought this about many times and so have many farmers. On the other hand, stock can be allowed to cause a withdrawal of the depth of grass root systems and their soil life communities, to shallower horizons: then the soil loses air and loses depth. The life in the soil is suppressed. The fertility of the soil is then in decline.

   There are species of plants, lucerne is one of them, which send some of their roots deep down searching for moisture. Lucerne is the alfalfa of the Americas. The soil must have some aeration, such as is found naturally on the loamy and gravelly banks of a water course. Once any roots have penetrated deeply they improve the aeration of the deep soil. These pioneering roots provide the conditions for the roots of other plants to penetrate deeper and to follow the pattern of growth and decay in building a deeper and a better soil.

   This is the Keyline soil making technique which authority has rejected for two decades. They have said soil cannot be made that way, it can only be improved by the constant use of chemicals.

   The most recent happening which illustrates the speed with which soil can be transformed occured in May this year (1971). A T.V. camera unit, comprising a rural adviser, a cameraman and assistant, were taking movie sequences of projects we had designed in north-eastern Victoria. On one farm, the untreated soil above an irrigation channel was dug up with a spade and dicovered to be three inches deep. The soil peeled off the sub-soil below in a three-inch thick block carrying the light-brown earth of the root zone, and not a single root had penetrated into the yellow sub-soil. Soil nearby but below the new channel had been "pattern cultivated" once nine weeks earlier with a chisel plow and irrigated immediately afterwards. (Chapter 12, Water the Forest). But here the soil, wherever it was dug up, was nearly black to six inches deep and carried a heavy root growth with earthworms in evidence. Even the owner of the farm was surprised at this proof of how quickly soil can be made deeper and more fertile.

   Last year (1970) in the Kiewa Region of north-eastern Victoria (south-eastern State of Australia), two high ranking officers of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics from Canberra, the seat of the Federal Government, inspected many samples of soil which were dug up with a spade. They were there at the request of a Minister of the Federal Government to inspect several properties on which these techniques of landscape design had been implemented.

   The party which accompanied the officers were farmers and graziers of the Kiewa, my youngest son Ken and myself.

   After the officers had been shown several properties, it would be true to say they had become convinced by the inspections and the demonstrations of the efficacy of the water control layouts and other aspects of the development but perhaps not yet of soil making; they were finding it too incredible to believe. Then came the final inspection of their visit.

   On this property the owners had doubled their profit by following only one aspect of Keyline--soil development. Here that most scientific implement of soil examination--the spade--finally satisfied the officers. They saw many samples of pasture soil dug up. Some areas of the farm had only one year of soil development, others had two consecutive years and others the full three years. The officers looked at the soil, and felt it, they pulled it apart, they smelt it and compared it with untreated soil nearby. They became acquainted with the earthworms, which seem to appear from nowhere when soil is on the improve.

   Formerly these pastures were cared for according to the recommended orthodox procedures. But over the past three years no money had been spent on artificial fertilisers and no poison sprays had been used on the pastures. There were no pests to be seen.

   The money saved added considerably to nett profits. So did the greater quantities of better feed which were produced. There were other bonuses: the former worry of bloat has now been removed; there is no sickness in the herd and there are no veterinary bills and a considerable number of man hours has been saved.

   Finally, last year they were third highest in butterfat production for the dairy factory. The two other producers ahead of them were members of the Kiewa Keyline Club who had started their development work one year before them.

   They still have their so-called pasture pests, but now the pests are hard to find instead of being in uncounted millions. I think they appreciate these pests now. They get the message, which is: when the pests breed to plague proportions they are saying: "This is wonderful pests' food." When it is a struggle for a few specimens to stay alive, the few pests are screaming in despair: "Keep your lousy pasture, it's only fit for cattle." A cow--if she is given a choice--and the pests, are good judges of pasture, but few men are.

   Nature produced Her most fertile soil on only limited areas of the Earth where the climate was moderate. Always legumes and grasses grew together. The herds of grazing animals ate Nature's pastures. By learning from Nature's methods and applying techniques which improve the relationship of both air and water in the soil and by good stock control, the fertile soil belts of Nature can be extended to cover both higher and lower rainfall influences in hotter and colder climates.

   In Nature's grasslands the carnivores ate the old, the sick and the excessive young of the grazing herds and maintained the Balance of the Landscape.

   Now mankind dominates all. He must maintain the Balance of the Landscape--or perish.