Ploughman's Folly

1945, a first printing of this farming classic

Author

Publisher

Printing Details

First edition, first printing. Hardback in dustwrapper. 19 × 12.5cm, 142pp.

A farming classic that has been 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. When it was first issued (in American in 1943), 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 ploughing.” With the key sentence, he opened a new era. For generations, reasoning about the management of the soil has rested upon the use of the moldboard plough. 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 ploughing natural fertilizers deep into the soil. Through his own test-plot and field-scale experiments, in which he prepared the soil with a disc 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.

Condition

The book itself is in very good condition but of the quality expected of a book printed on wartime economy paper. There is some fading to the boards' edges. The dustwrapper is a little torn to the edges but has not been price-clipped.