Science in the Agriculture of Tomorrow

R. W. Trullinger.

Let us recognize that our agricultural industry is gradually becoming a big food- and fiber-production business. American farming has become more than just a way of life. Agriculture is operating on a gradually shrinking number of farm units. Against a drop of nearly a million farm units since 1935 is a considerable rise in the average size of the individual farm. Several factors and conditions can account for the change. The major impelling factor appears to be the need for greater efficiency in the production of larger yields of food and fiber of higher quality this despite the further fact that fewer and fewer people are engaged in farming. In 1945 one farm worker produced enough food and fiber to clothe and feed himself and 14 other persons. He produced twice as much as did one farm worker 50 years ago.

The upsurge of efforts to develop better procedures of marketing and distribution during the past few years seems to accept the fact that large-volume production is here to stay. Everything is geared for mass production on a big-business scale, and it would be difficult to believe that the agricultural industry of today will voluntarily revert to last-generation methods and practices. Efficiency is of paramount importance in farming now. We can expect that future years will intensify it.

In wartime, when technology moves faster, efficiency becomes even more vital. The fruits of many previous years of research and a stepped-up program of research to meet the farmers' wartime needs helped produce the record crops that helped us to victory in the Second World War. Since then, agricultural research and its application have advanced even more rapidly. As a result, the Nation has reasonable assurance that its farm plant can meet the needs of a population that has grown by 18 million in the past decade and at the same time satisfy our greater international obligations.

Agriculture is not only a mechanical industry. It is one in which biology plays a major part. It is so dynamic biologically as to permit of relatively little human control. When we recognize that fact, we begin to appreciate the importance of science in our agricultural operations. Scientific research and its counterpart, the application of the findings of research to farming, are the core of our agricultural technology. This technology has brought rapid changes. Daily the numbers of mechanized farm units have increased. With the help of soil science, plant breeding, and the other scientific services made available by their agricultural institutions, American farmers have made astounding progress. But with new technologies come new problems. New practices constantly force adjustments in customs and ways of life.

The symptoms are recognized as we move along. Farmers expect their research institutions to find the answers, both for the everyday, lesser problems and for the big ones that have no chance of being solved by the single, isolated research approach.

WE HAVE only so much land on which to produce crops and livestock. Improved varieties of crops have been developed, the yields from which are far beyond yields of the same crops in previous years. Soils have been put under terrific strain in the process, and lands have gone out of production for one crop and gone into production for another. Some lands have been abandoned altogether through misuse.

Others not previously used have come into production, either wisely or unwisely. But the fact remains that we have only a certain acreage of agricultural or potentially agricultural land available in the United States. This, in the face of a steadily increasing population, makes one thing sure : Future research must, above all, keep in mind the need to feed and clothe more and more people from a limited over-all acreage. The problems of land use, therefore, become paramount. They call for the best of scientific approaches.

Surpluses and how to dispose of them with a minimum of loss will probably always constitute a problem. History indicates that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and other prominent farmers of this country had to struggle with surpluses. Adequate distribution and marketing mechanisms always have been and probably always will be a foremost need. Certainly a reasonable part of our research effort will have to be devoted to this need, now and in the future. Such research not only helps prevent loss for farmer-producers, but it serves to get adequate amounts of food and fiber to the places where they are needed and where they can be used most effectively. As a people we would much rather see surpluses of food and fiber than to be confronted with terrible shortages of these necessities of life. Many people on this earth, even some within the limits of our continent, frequently go undernourished and ill-clad. I well remember that when I was a farm boy, big crops meant that we were comfortable and well-fed, even though the prices of corn, hogs, and beef cattle went down. But crop failures were usually accompanied on a wide front by hunger and misery. Research appears the best way out of either a surplus or an undersupply situation.

WITHOUT INTELLIGENTLY planned research and more efficient production, people in the United States could be faced by widespread crop failures in the not too distant future. We are feeding and clothing more people than ever. Fewer people are working at the job of farming. Our productive resources have been overworked and strained. We are taking all kinds of risks with our resources so as to attain big production. It would be a new and harrowing experience for this great country to be filled with hordes of hungry people struggling for existence. That should never happen. It can be prevented if our powers of deductive reasoning, as they relate to the maintenance and constant development and improvement of our productive resources, are supported and encouraged.

That means that we must utilize the best and most modern scientific principles and techniques. We must devise ways and means to conserve our existing and potential resources of soil, water, plants, and animals, and to conserve and maintain our facilities and resources for future production.

WE KNOW A LOT about the soil. We know that it is a dynamic substance, alive and constantly changing. Our research scientists have identified the ultimate particle size of soil that is considered to be the nucleus of soil energy.

Only slow, natural processes have been able in the past to release this energy in amounts and at rates dictated by Nature. Probably this has been a good thing when one considers what might happen as a result of heavy fertilization and cultural treatments or other practices if Nature did not put on the brakes. One predominantly agricultural State, for example, produced immense crops during the war by use of improved crop varieties and excessively heavy fertilization. After a few years, however, the productive level of the soils of that State began to go down, despite continued heavy fertilization and cultural treatment. What happened? No one knows except that Nature rebelled. But the soil scientists of the experiment station in the State are starting from scratch to get the answer.

That is not an unusual occurrence. It is being met in many areas and apparently for a multitude of reasons. In my own experience, I learned that a tractor with one bad spark plug can play havoc with the productive level of certain soils. Some of our advanced technologies also have created new and difficult problems. We thought we knew all about the soil, how to maintain its fertility and level of productivity for crops. We know enough now to recognize that under normal conditions soil accumulates and stores energy and releases it in crop production through some strange mechanism, the exact nature of which we apparently do not yet know nor do we know how to control it. The phenomenon of photosynthesis, which involves the manufacture of a still strange substance named chlorophyll, apparently essential to plant prosperity, is largely a scientific secret.

All those points are factors involved in assuring greater precision in the production of the right kinds of food and fiber from the soil, if we can only learn their basic mechanisms and how we can manipulate them constructively without destroying them or the basic resources on which they depend. The future of agriculture presents the need to find out about all these factors and how to assemble them with all the new technologies into a workable whole.

WE TALK glibly about the sun's rays in relation to the total energy needed to grow a food crop. Yet what do we actually know about the basic mechanism involved in utilization of the sun's energy? And how might we improve on such use and thereby possibly conserve our more tangible resources of energy? What do we know about the possible influence of the sun on the ability of rain water to expedite plant growth? We have many laboratory techniques that use elements of the solar spectrum. But what have we accomplished with the sun beyond that? What do we know about cosmic rays? What do we know about many things affecting the relationship between the natural elements and their ways of expression and the sustained productive capacity of the soil for food crops of both plant and animal form? We have developed improved crop's that increase yields. What have these increases in yield done to the total supply of available productive energy and how may we balance income and outgo of energy when we grow a bigger and better crop on the same area of land?

Crops include livestock forage and feeds and food consumed directly by human beings. In the face of the growing need for more food by a growing population to be produced from the same over-all land area, the unit nutritive value of that food must always be kept in mind. We have learned much in recent years about the nutritive value of foods and feeds. We know that through some strange mechanism their nutritive properties can be influenced by soil management and treatment and by development of the crops themselves through the application of the principles of fertilization, genetics, and breeding. There is much that we do not know about these phenomena, but research scientists are finding out a little more every day.