A Continuing Process

It is natural that we take the present agricultural efficiency on good American farms for granted. But suppose all the people of the United States should leave the country suddenly, as the cliff-dwelling Indians left Mesa Verde many years ago, to return a hundred years later. How many of our modern cultivated plants and animals do you suppose would be found? Very few indeed. Perhaps a few straggly specimens might be found here and there from which to begin a breeding program all over again. But competition with wild plants and animals, diseases, and insects would have destroyed most of the best stocks.

Through careful selection and breeding, scientists and farmers have developed plants and animals to suit our taste, that may be grown with special cultural practices and protection. The whole level of production is high above that of the natural environment. It is exposed to all sorts of threats with which scientists must be prepared to deal.

In agriculture, research never ends. As the Queen told Alice in Wonderland : "Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Some have even said, however, that we have too much science, too much efficiency. Scientists were even blamed for the great depression in farm prices a decade ago! If food had been scarcer, prices would have been higher; there would have been no surplus! All this is absurd to a scientist. As long as people want desperately for food and fiber, surpluses are market phenomena, due to failures in man-made economic and political arrangements. Of course, farmers will need to make adjustments among the products they produce to meet changing needs. But the more efficient our agriculture becomes, the more people can be released from the job of food gathering to produce the other things needed for health and comfort. And the better will be life in the country.

For the first time in human history the possibility exists for agricultural production, and industrial production, too, to become efficient enough to produce the goods needed for everyone to have health, education, and the amenities of civilization. The way to the good life is not to hold science back, but to push it forward and adopt the social and economic devices that will increase its use and spread its benefits.

Present Trends in Science

Today there are two strong trends in scientific research, increasing specialization among scientists and increasing breadth of the problems attacked by research. In a way these pull in opposite directions. While the problems are being conceived in ever-broader terms, covering wide ranges in subject matter, individual scientists work more intensively in a narrower range of subject matter. Both trends are inevitable. As knowledge advances in chemistry, let us say, one individual cannot hope to become intimately acquainted with the whole field. There is too much detail to learn. He must concentrate in a narrow part of the field to be able to learn what has gone before and push into the unknown.

Teams of workers are being organized. Each scientist must understand enough of the other specialties so that all may know one another's language. They will need to agree on the outline of the problem. The more these two trends continue, the greater will be the emphasis on cooperation in research. And it must be cooperation without the domination that stifles individual thought and responsibility. This kind of cooperation, with the benefits of group research and freedom for individual ideas, is already the outstanding feature of agricultural research in America.

Agricultural research has always been chiefly supported by the public. The trend is toward increasing public responsibility for all scientific research, including that in the basic sciences. Two important trends follow this one. First, scientists must accept a greater share of social responsibility for the consequences of new scientific knowledge. The implications of their own discoveries during the war have dramatically shown them that. Second, the fruits of science must be more quickly and generally available to all the people and must not become the basis for exploitation through monopoly controls.

Education and research go together. Even more important than mere teaching of technology is the teaching of the scientific method. Its cultural values perhaps exceed its purely practical ones, great as these are. The methods of science are those of democracy. Each citizen needs to learn how to use science himself and not rely wholly on the expert.

Nowhere is this more important than on farms. It would be a sorry day for democracy if farmers generally turned to experts to make decisions for them. They need to learn from scientists, of course. It is the job of scientists to give them the information in ways they can understand and use, and to work with them. It is definitely not one of doing the job of fanning for the farmer.

The lag in time between the development of new knowledge and techniques through research and their use by farmers is too great. This is especially true of those things that require a considerable change in the farming system for realization of the benefits. The use of hybrid seed corn spread quickly because no change in practice was necessary other than the source of seed. But the substitution of new pasture and feed crops for cotton on soils better adapted to them may require a complete change in the farming system. Such changes come too slowly.

Partly this is because the research did not go far enough. Many promising techniques have left the experiment station to sit on the shelf for years until some enterprising farmer took the risk of trying them in a revised farming system—in other words, until some farmer undertook the necessary experimentation at the level of the farm unit. We need to use pilot research farms, representing the different kinds of farms to be dealt with, on which the new techniques are tested within a complete farming system and modified as the need is shown. Such tests can be conducted best on normal going farms operated by farmers under special agreements.

A few such pilot research farms have been started on a trial basis. Many more are needed. But even these will not carry the results to all farmers. The well-read farmer who is also a good organizer can read about the results of research and apply them to his own farm. Many others cannot; they need to see the new practices in farming systems on farms about like their own, operated by farmers like themselves. For Years, individual techniques have been demonstrated for farmers. Although useful, again to the more fortunate farmers, it is not enough. What are needed are unit-demonstration farms where all the practices are fitted, or rather are being fitted, into a system. Experience with such demonstrations during the past 10 years has been very rewarding indeed.

The general course of scientific research as applied to the problems of farms is through five steps: Research in the basic sciences; research in the applied sciences, including experimental field tests; pilot research farms; unit-demonstration farms; and all farms.

Each step is vital to the others. Because of the popular appeal of the second, the first is always in danger of being slighted. Until recently the third and fourth have been left largely to chance, as something for the more enterprising farmers to do themselves. But the lag in time is often very great, especially as applied to the small farm. If science is really going to work and to distribute its benefits to all farmers, each step must be definitely provided for in the scheme of things. None should be allowed to lag. Nor should the time of peace be wasted.

THEAUTHOR

Charles E. Kellogg is chief of the Division of Soil Survey in the Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering. Before joining the Department in 1934, he taught soil science and did research in that subject at Michigan State College, the University of Wisconsin, and the North Dakota Agricultural College. He is a graduate of Michigan State College.

Dr. Kellogg has written and lectured widely on soil science and general agriculture. His published work includes a recent book, The Soils That Support Us.