9,600 MILES THROUGH THE U.S.A. IN A STATION WAGON BY EVE BALFOUR Illustrated by photographs taken by the author (EXCEPT WHERE OTHERWISE STATED) Reprinted from MOTHER EARTH, Journal of the Soil Association July and October, 1953, and January, April and July, 1954 Self (left) with my travelling companion, Miss K. Carnley Photograph taken in England by Mr. George Trevelyan) CONTENTS Page FOREWORD 6 PART I. Introduction and General Impressions 7 Purpose of the Trip; Planning the Trip; Housing and Highways; The Country; The People. PART II. Conservation 21 The Conservation Service; The Brandy Wine Valley Association; The Palomar Valley; "Big Dam Foolishness"; Virginia, Maryland, Big Spring (Texas); Kansas Wheat Belt; New Mexico; Large-Scale Composting. PART III. Organic Farms and Gardens (with Special Reference to Natural Biological Pest Control) 47 Atlanta (Ga.); Houston (Texas); El Paso (Texas); California; New Mexico; Iowa; Illinois; Ohio; New Jersey; New England. PART IV. Some Findings by Agricultural Scientists 72 Florida Research Station; Texas Research Foundation; Krilium; D.D.T.; Dr. W. A. Albrecht; Proteins; Dr. E. Pfeiffer; Dr. J. Cocannouer; Drs. Koffler and Schnabel; Dr. Chester; Dr. Firmin Bear. PART V. Conversations with Medical Research Workers and Practitioners 96 Dr. F. M. Pottenger, Jnr.; Insecticides; Hormones; Epilepsy and Poliomyelitis; Trace Minerals; Dr. Coda Martin; Fluorine; Miscellaneous Items. POSTSCRIPT 107 AFTERWORD 110 OBJECTS OF THE SOIL ASSOCIATION 111 ILLUSTRATIONS Page Map of United States showing Route 56-57 The car that did the job, and my partner. Taken in Oklahoma 9 All that was left of my office after the fire 10 A street in New Orleans, outside our hostess's house 11 Virginian farmhouse near Charlottesville. Date 1750. Home of our hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Bradley 13 Sleepy Peppers Inn, Tucson, Arizona. A charming place to stay. Owned and run by our hostess, Mrs. Sloane, and her husband 14 The Needles, N. Arizona, showing the Colorado River after it leaves the Grand Canyon 15 High altitude range country, S. Arizona 16 Mesquite bushes, S. New Mexico Mesa 17 Typical example of roadside litter 18 Typical wheat town in N. W. Kansas, dominated by grain silos 19 Tree felled by beavers 25 Cutting ditches by dynamite 27 Alkaline deposit making soil barren and useless 28 Irrigation in the Palomar Valley Conservation Are 30 Soil covered this rock before the war 35 Field prepared for cotton, showing ridges filled with blown soil. Near Big Spring, Texas 37 Wheat Stubble, Goodland, Kansas 39 Breeding-stock on sorghum stalks 40 Automatic silage feede 41 In-calf heifers at the Burdiss ranch 43 The Modern Cowboy 43 Pecan orchard in Georgia, undersown to cattle pasture 50 Globe artichokes in Mrs. Thibodeaux's organic garden, Houston, Texas 51 Mrs. Ezell, of El Paso, Texas, and the Ezell farmhouse 52 Turning and shredding compost on the Ezell cotton farm, El Paso, Texas 53 Compost-heap beside irrigation channel on the Gillett cotton farm. El Paso, Texas 54 Owl house in Mr. Anthony's organic ovocardo-pear orchard 58 Southern Californian orange grove in dying condition, typical of many (Photographed in 1951) 61 Champion Bros, all-organic orange grove, photographed same day and in same district as grove shown above 61 The Halbleib organic farm, McNabb, Illinois 66 Open-pollinated corn grown by Mr. Halbleib 67 Spanish Moss hanging from tree (winter) 74 Brahman bull at State Experiment Station, Belgard, Florida 75 Weeds in empty cat pens 84 Chrystallisation Test 92 Eroded Hills in Oklahoma. (See Part II.) 101 Yearlings on the Burdiss Ranch, Manhatten, Kansas 109 FOREWORD his account of a tour in the U.S.A. was originally written as a personal and intimate report to fellow members of the Soil Association, and appeared in Tfive instalments in that society's quarterly journal—MOTHER EARTH. The present reprint has been issued because of a demand both inside and outside Soil Association membership. It may therefore now reach a wider public, and for the sake of new readers who are not members of the Association, a few words of explanation may be helpful. The Soil Association is a world-wide, non-profit making, non-political, non- sectarian, voluntary body with headquarters in London. Registered in 1946, it now has members in 45 countries. The official objects will be found on page 111 and an application form for membership on page 112. From 1947 to 1954 the Association assumed responsibility for the conduct and management of the long-term farm-scale nutrition investigation known as the Haughley Farm Experiment (information about which is available on application to the London office). In 1954 this important piece of research work was handed over to the Ecological Research Foundation, an independent body promoted by the Soil Association. (A memorandum on this also is available on application.) It was as representative of the Soil Association that I toured part of the U.S.A. in 1951 and again in 1953, and in writing my report for circulation to its members I have taken a certain attitude of mind for granted which, for other readers, perhaps needs stating. A glance at the Association's objects on page in will indicate, not only the exceedingly wide field covered, but also that the Association's approach is positive rather than negative. It believes that new knowledge will be gained through ecology (the study of inter-relationships—or wholeness), rather than through continued fragmentation. A study of wholeness leads inevitably to a new attitude towards life itself, for when the universe is seen as a whole, Nature is seen as being governed by the laws of Order and Inter-dependence, and survival is seen to depend on biological balance, not on cut-throat competition, for the part is not greater than the whole. Throughout Nature a complex biological balance exists between all living organisms, as well as between each and its environment. The lesson we have to learn is how to discover and interpret the part which all other life plays in the whole, and how to co-operate with it. Our ignorance about Life is at present profound. Those who believe in Wholeness know that we can increase our knowledge only by admitting ignorance, by cultivating humility, by enlarging our field of vision through learning how to observe ecologically, and by respecting all life rather than wantonly destroying it; by learning to use science to interpret, and work with, natural processes, instead of providing inferior substitutes for them, and by acknowledging that within natural laws Divine Law is manifested. E.B.B. 9,600 MILES IN A STATION WAGON EVE BALFOUR Part I. Introduction and General Impressions Purpose of the Trip y 1953 trip to the United States differed from the one I took in 1951 in two major respects, namely—its primary purpose and its mode of Mtransport. My visit in 1951 was exploratory. I wanted to find out three things: what was actually happening in America in fundamental nutrition research ("the relationship of soil, plant, animal and man"); the methods by which the principles of organic farming and gardening were applied under conditions so different from anything of which I had first-hand knowledge; and, finally, whether there was enough general interest in those things for which the Soil Association stands to make it possible for me to earn my travelling expenses by lecturing. The venture was highly successful. Arising out of it, the primary purpose of my return in 1953 was to visit some of the men engaged in research whose work I had learnt about in 1951. I particularly wanted to discuss matters of mutual interest with those whose research work appears to have an important bearing on Soil Association findings, whether at our experimental farm at Haughley, on members' own farms and gardens, or in the private practices of some of our medical members. Needless to say, I could not hope, in three months, to visit all those of whose work I heard in 1951 (and I have since heard of a lot more), but there were certain key places in the pattern of investigation I had mapped out for myself which I felt could not be omitted. These were :—The State Experiment Station in Florida, because of its work on the relationship between mineral availability and organic matter; the Texas Research Foundation at Dallas, because more work has been done there than anywhere else I know of, on the study of food contamination with DDT and other insecticides; Dr. Cocannouer in Oklahoma, because of his experience as a practical ecologist; Dr. Pottenger, and other members of the Academy of Nutrition, in California, because they have related soil fertility factors to human health; and Dr. Albrecht at the University of Missouri, because of his work on trace elements, and on the quality of proteins. Planning the Trip A glance at the map of the United States (see page 56) will indicate the magnitude of the task I had set myself in planning to visit these widely scattered people. It would involve nearly 10,000 miles, and it would take a lot of lectures to pay the travelling expenses of such a trip—by whatever method I travelled. I decided that the only way it could be done was to drive myself by road; and wherever I had to sleep, there—if I was invited to do so—I would speak. The key places mentioned above determined the route, and it took quite a bit of planning. The starting point was to be Lancaster, Pennsylvania, because, through the connection of one of our members with the Garden Spot Motor Company, I was able to arrange to rent a reliable car.