PLENTY TO EAT
Teller, Walter Magnes
Plenty to Eat MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOUR LAND. A Chemist Looks at Organi-cuhure, by Leonard Wickenden. De-vin-Adair. 132 pp. $2.50. Reviewed by Walter Magnes Teller OBVIOUSLY, there is more than one...
...To a very large extent, we are feeding ourselves and our animals on air...
...the balance is built up from water and the atmosphere with the aid of the sun...
...Maybe a fellow doesn't need a lot of land, but it's nice to live where there's plenty of air and water...
...As a result he has come up with a reasonable, pleasant, and highly readable book, Make Friends With Your Land—one of the best books to appear on the subject...
...He writes convincingly of the way microscopic life of the soil, supported by a small quantity of organic matter, furnishes a natural means of control and cure of disease in plant-life by manufacturing and supplying substances called anti-biotics...
...In spite of all beliefs to the contrary, there has been no decline in the domesticated animal population in the last 20 years . . ." "On the average, only about 5 or 6% of a crop comes from the soil...
...It's soundly hopeful, too...
...And if you are not an organic gardener or farmer but want to know what the shouting is all about—is there a place for chemical fertilizers in agriculture and if so, what?—you will also enjoy it...
...Leonard Wickenden is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemists who felt challenged by the theories of organic agriculture—organicul-ture, he calls it, as opposed to chemiculture—and he decided to put the theories to test on his farm in Connecticut...
...Reviewed by Walter Magnes Teller OBVIOUSLY, there is more than one kind of chemist...
...If you are already an organic gardener or farmer, you will enjoy Wickenden's book...
...We are going to have enough to eat: "Notwithstanding the appalling loss of organic fertilizing values which occurs through our wasteful methods of sewage disposal, there is produced annually, in the United States, ample animal manure to take care of all our requirements...
Vol. 14 • February 1950 • No. 2
