Fertility Farming Newman Turner Allan Nation
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Fertility Farming explores an approach to farming that makes minimal use of plowing, eschews chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and encourages cover cropping and manure application. Newman Turner holds that the foundation of the effectiveness of a fertile soil - and the measure of a fertile soil - is its content of organic matter, ultimately, its humus. Upon a basis of humus, nature builds a complete structure of healthy life - without need for disease control of any kind. In fact, disease treatment is unnecessary in nature, as disease is the outcome of the unbalancing or perversion of the natural order - and serves as a warning that something is wrong. The avoidance of disease is therefore the simple practice of natural law. Much more than theory, this book was written to serve as a practical guide for farmers. Newman Turner's advice for building a productive, profitable organic farming system rings as true today as it did sixty years ago when it was written.
Fertility Farming Newman Turner Allan Nation
Quick ship. Excellent book from one of the creators of the natural farming movement.Product details
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Fertility Farming Newman Turner Allan Nation Reviews
This is a pretty fantastic book that examines the harm traditional farming techniques have had on the soil and how to reverse that harmful trend, generally in a more cost-effective, productive and less labor-intensive manner. Although this book was written many years ago, it's information is both enduring and applicable to modern farming--perhaps even more so now than when written, as more people begin to see the harmful evidence and lackluster results of the farming practices commonly espoused.
Newman Turner, with a lifelong background in agriculture including a formal education in such, began his career managing a farm in rural England. During the first years of his care of the farm, while using the traditional methods of plowing, antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers, he realized a net financial loss and a general lack of productivity among his crops, both plant and animal. He realized general poor health of the soil, of the crops, of the animals, and ever-rising costs associated with bringing the plant and animal life to maturity. It was at this point that Turner, influenced by Sir Albert Howard, began to question whether the newer methods, as described above, were actually performing as their proponents insisted and whether there wasn't a better way yet to be found.
What began as one small question became a life-long journey of discovery into how best to replicate nature's way of farming. Beginning on one plot, Newman refused to plow, weed, or fertilize using generally accepted methods. Rather, after the dismal harvest of the wheat crop, he left the straw as browse/mulch and allowed his animals to free range on the pasture, thereby enriching the soil with the natural composts. He noticed immediately an improvement in the health of the pastured animals and reduced feed needs. When, a year later, he resowed the field, he was astounded to notice far fewer weeds than any of his other fields and greatly increased yields of the crop grown! In his own words
"The third week of September I sowed Pilot seed wheat in a field which had grown moderate crops of wheat the two previous years. This is bad farming practice of course, but I was curious to see what a third crop of wheat would do. The field had not been ploughed for thirteen months. The seed was sown in a rough knobbly seed-bed in a covering of dead and dying weeds churned up with a mixture of wheat straw stubble by the disc harrow. The tilth was rough enough to block the drill at times, but we scrambled our way through it and I prayed that rain would come to give the wheat a good start. For three weeks there was no rain and the weeds flourished. Throughout the winter it looked as though the crop would have to be resown in the spring. But when spring came the weeds were diminishing and the wheat shot forward. Before the wheat was in ear it was evident that the weeds had disappeared and the wheat was clearly one of the heaviest crops I had grown on the farm, for I had never seen such a strong and vigorous growth, without manuring of any kind, and after two previous straw crops. Nature had attended to the manuring by the natural death of the weeds; for the weed seeds remaining ungerminated on the surface had obviously come to maturity during the late autumn and had died off during the winter, and the acids of decay had released available minerals to provide nutriment for the flourishing wheat roots. The long dry spring and the drought of early summer left the wheat unaffected. Vigorous growth continued in consequence of the moisture and organic nutriment held at the root level of the plant by the natural sponge of decaying organic matter. The wheat yielded 39-1/2 cwt. an acre compared with 27 cwt. an acre for the first crop and 20 cwt. an acre for the second crop. Equally successful was a crop of oats and vetches, also sown on land that had not been ploughed for two years previously. So rapid was the growth of this crop that though we started harvesting it for silage at the optimum stage of growth, about two feet high, before we could finish the field it was over six feet high in parts and provided a tremendous tonnage of green food per acre."
Having successfully applied Mother Nature's process to a single field, Newman began to turn his efforts to the remaining fields, as well as the livestock retained on the farm. Over a period of years, first as manager of the farm and eventually as owner, he tripled the fertility of the soil (with soil tests as proof) and more than tripled the valuation of his land. He saw disease reduced to almost nothing and production and profits rise in every arena. In fact, he took the culled livestock of other farmers (written off as unproductive and unrecoverable by traditional methods and received for free) and saw them recover health and become productive with very little input by himself or his very small staff. If this is not enough to convince you of the value of his methods, Newman always provides factual data and cost-breakdowns proving the success and usefulness of his endeavors, as well as reasonably detailed information on how to achieve similar results in your pastures.
While reading this book, I continued to be struck by the "Aha!" moments, the thought, "But that's so obvious, why hadn't I (or anyone else) thought of that before!" For instance, he instructs the farmer to plant the best and largest of last year's potatoes as this year's seed crop--exactly the opposite of traditional farm methods--insisting that doing so will ensure survival of the fittest, rather than promulgation of the weakest and least disease hardy specimens. I couldn't help but think, "Well, duh!" and yet at the same time acknowledge that even today the opposite is done, much to the detriment of the agricultural industry. He writes of weeds "We are now realizing that we have been mistaken to regard weeds as enemies of the farm crop. Most weeds are deep rooting plants which penetrate the subsoil and bring to the surface valuable elements (not available to the shallower-rooting domestic crop) which have been plundered from the topsoil by years of exploitive methods...Deep ploughing can never achieve the same effect, for the elements remain locked up until worked on by organic acids from the humus and the rootlets." Newman suggests that weeds are nature's cover crop and should be used exactly as--and in tandem with--every other cover crop in a nurturing cycle of mineral-mining and livestock-feeding growth, protective death as a mulch, and replenishing resurrection through decay into humus. He explains exactly WHY common agricultural methods such as plowing and chemical fertilization are so incredibly destructive to the soil and why his methods are so much better.
In short, Newman Turner is a problem solver. His methods are generally easier, more efficient, more productive, less costly, healthier for the plant, the livestock, the farmer, the consumer, and the planet as a whole. I cannot for the life of me understand why so many in the agricultural industry are not utilizing his methods today. Furthermore, his methods are easily adaptable to people on a much smaller scale, such as I myself. I simply want to put my own small-ish acreage to best use, thereby growing a portion of my own food, and find his methods eminently suitable to my needs. The only reason I have given this book four stars rather than five is because this book was written for the British farmer and a lot of the specific information is not applicable to me as an American. Also, all of his measurements are given in pounds and old English measurements, such as the hundredweight (cwt.) measurement given in the exemplary paragraph above. In order to understand these references or find suitable alternatives to the plants he recommends, I have to do a little legwork on Google and such. This is by no means a severe drawback or even, in regard to regional tailoring of suitable plant life, uncommon, but was enough of a drawback to drop one star. However, I fully recommend this book to anyone even considering using a grass-based means of livestock production or an organic means of grain/vegetable production on any scale other than the urban/suburban garden.
Very good book. Full of very good information. Covers crop rotation and crop rotation in depth.
newman turner is a person to read. he is knowledgeable about farming. want to farm the easy, organic way. read the book
I would have liked the book more if I was trying how to learn to do his type of farming. I was looking more for conclusion resulting from his type of farming.
Quick ship. Excellent book from one of the creators of the natural farming movement.
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