I consider it highly important that experiments on the lines suggested in this book should be carried out without delay. The crop takes out more than the compost puts back. The organic cultivator replies that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, which he can demonstrate. Therefore, either mathematics do not apply to living organisms, or there must be some figures missing from the sum. It seems to me that this book gives a clue to one at least of the possible missing figures, and I hope our scientists will give it the study it deserves.
Mankind is at the last frontier.
There is no new soil to be had in the horizontal plane. His hope lies in building new soil vertically. Dr. Barrett asserts that by harnessing the earthworm in the way he recommends, the kitchen waste or garbage from a household of two or three members will furnish enough ideal earthworm food to breed tens of thousands of the soil builders each year. He discovered, in an experiment in his culture beds, that an acre of soil, if provided with enough organic matter, could support an astronomical population of earthworms, and quotes the Oregon State and New York State College of Forestry field studies as indicating that an earthworm population of from 250,000 to 1,500,000 an acre is enough to keep the earth as fertile and productive as man can want it. By the slow process of nature, it takes 500 to 1,000 years to lay down an inch of topsoil.