The Soil and Health Quotes

“The soil is, as a matter of fact, full of live organisms. It is essential to conceive of it as something pulsating with life, not as a dead or inert mass. There could be no greater misconception than to regard the earth as dead: a handful of soil is teeming with life. The living fungi, bacteria, and protozoa, invisibly present in the soil complex, are known as the soil population. This population of millions and millions of minute existences, quite invisible to our eyes of course, pursue their own lives. They come into being, grow, work, and die: they sometimes fight each other, win victories, or perish; for they are divided into groups and families fitted to exist under all sorts of conditions. The state of a soil will change with the victories won or the losses sustained; and in one or other soil, or at one or other moment, different groups will predominate.”
― Albert Howard, The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture

“Our industries, our trade, and our way of life generally have been based first on the exploitation of the earth's surface and then on the oppression of one another--on banditry pure and simple. The inevitable result is now upon us. The unsuccessful bandits are trying to despoil their more successful competitors. The world is divided into two hostile camps: at the root of this vast conflict lies the evil of spoliation which has destroyed the moral integrity of our generation. While this contest marches to its inevitable conclusion, it will not be amiss to draw attention to a forgotten factor which may perhaps help to restore peace and harmony to a tortured world. We must in our future planning pay great attention to food--the product of sun, soil, plant, and livestock--in other words, to farming and gardening.”
― Albert Howard, The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture

“The appearance of a pest should be regarded as a warning from Mother Earth to put our house in order.”
― Albert Howard, The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture

“Neither in theory nor in practice does one farmer in a hundred realize how important it is to cultivate, cultivate, and cultivate.”
― Albert Howard, The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture

“The first duty of the agriculturalist must always be to understand that he is a part of Nature and cannot escape from his environment. He must therefore obey Nature's rules.”
― Albert Howard, The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture

“Never does Nature separate the animal and vegetable worlds. This is a mistake she cannot endure, and of all the errors which modern agriculture has committed this abandonment of mixed husbandry has been the most fatal.”
― Albert Howard, The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture

“... an ever-recurring cycle, a cycle which, repeating itself silently and ceaselessly, ensures the continuation of living matter. This cycle is constituted of the successive and repeated processes of birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay. An eastern religion calls this cycle the Wheel of Life and no better name could be given to it. The revolutions of this Wheel never falter and are perfect. Death supercedes life and life rises again from what is dead and decayed.”
― Albert Howard, The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture

“All the great agricultural systems which have survived have made it their business never to deplete the earth of its fertility without at the same time beginning the process of restoration.”
― Albert Howard, The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture

“The study of plant diseases for their own sake is proving an increasingly intricate game, to which modern scientists have devoted many wasted hours. Such studies would be amusing if they were not tragic, for no disease in plant, animal, or man can properly be viewed unless it is looked on as an interference with, or to speak more plainly, as the distortion or negation of that positive aspect of the growing organism which we call health.”
― Albert Howard, The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture