Owner Built Homes and Homesteads

Image Gallery Aerial view of a Bedouin encampment in the Libyan Desert, on deforested land ruined by agricultural production during the Roman era. PHOTO: RICHARD ST. BARBE BAKER

—Nevada Chief Smohalla's reply to agricultural directives from Washington  

In 1952, Richard St. Barbe Baker led a Sahara University expedition into the Libyan desert to visit once forested lands the Roman Empire had converted to grain production. As Mr. Baker observes, "An iron plow is a dangerous implement, because it loosens the earth to a considerable depth, allowing the soil to be washed away in the first torrential downpour." In equatorial regions, especially, the clearing away of extensive areas for the production of row crops, such as corn or cotton, leads to certain disaster . . . even to the decline and fall of otherwise thriving civilizations.

Actually there is only one remaining ancient row-crop-based civilization: the Chinese. This fact rather impressed a University of Wisconsin soil scientist. In 1910 Professor F.H. King determined to study firsthand the row crop farming methods of the Chinese. His delightful travel book, FARMERS OF FORTY CENTURIES, appeared the following year. In it King describes the tilling, fertilizing and planting techniques that have enabled survival (and even improvements in soil structure and fertility) throughout these many centuries. Even before his trip to the Orient, maverick King found little acceptance to his theories of minimum tillage . . . which he pronounced in 1890. When he later gave credence to the use of human excrement as a row crop fertilizer, his colleagues discredited him completely. Professor King was perhaps the foremost soil scientist of his time, and FARMERS OF FORTY CENTURIES is the most important book on food production . . . yet it is not even listed in the Department of Agriculture's bibliography of 500 important books on soil management (SOILS AND MEN, Yearbook, 1938).