An Agricultural Testament Paperback – April 30, 2010

I have been a student of self sufficient and sustainable agriculture for over 6 years, experimenting in my back yard, touring local farms, attending seminars, etc during that time. What this book illustrates is that there is nothing new under the sun. Every revolutionary method of farming you see in practice today has predecessors that date back 100 or more years.The other take away for me is how easily knowledge is lost and unlearned when it is co-opted by scientists and universities beholden to corporations and governments for funding and direction.

Sir Albert Howard certainly did not mince words nor did he dance around the subject of the destruction of soil fertility by modern farming techniques. The very first sentence of chapter one sets the tenor for the entire book, "The maintenance of the fertility of the soil is the first condition of any permanent system of agriculture." He accurately depicts the soil as being the Earth's `capital' and upon reflection one would come to agree that all of mankind's wealth have originated from the soil. In the same regard I will have to state the Earth's future population and prosperity (or lack thereof) will be determined by whether or not we can regain the courage to recognize and act on the eternal truth of Nature.

The pioneer in permaculture soil management. Gives the history and the physiology of maintaining soil health.

While not a particularly useful book for organic gardeners, it is an enlightening one for those who are interested in the history and efficacy of organic growing. The book is written in a scholarly style and recounts Sir Alfred Howard's experiences in India and England as an agricultural agent.

This is a must read for anyone that really wants a scientific, analytical look at the natural growth of plants and animals. How plants interact with the fungus of the soil was new information to me, and unknown to everyone around me. Albert Howard's genius and the knowledge from his life's works must not be forgotten, as society moves on with industrialization.

This is a scientific writing, and a bit boring and tedious, but "groundbreaking" in thought. A must read for anyone interested in learning more about composting and organic farming. The connection between fungus and plants is fascinating, and I have never heard about it from any other source.

An old book, but a great one. I just wish that everyone would or could read it and understand the basic values of growing naturel food to feed the earth.

Dante is such a classic

It was written after childhood experience of agriculture that led to Cambridge and Imperial College, then Wye College, the West Indies and finally, Bihar in Eastern India. Unusually for the behaviour of Brits abroad the author listened to the locals and adopted the Indore process of organic farming. He describes his herd of cattle, although small and experimental, being raised in the Indore method and being in an island surrounded by Foot and Mouth Disease and Rinderpest without being in the slightest way infected. The Indians used to treat the cattle that were infected, with a noxious dose of tobacco juice, which seemed to cure FMD in many cases.The book was written in a professional, but interesting and in places witty style. It deserves a place in an educated person's library. Educated in a holistic way that is.

This book is one of the 20th century classics about sustainable agriculture. For all those who read, digest, consider and experiment, this book is a veritable treasure trove of information.The author spent 40 years as an agricultural researcher in various parts of the British Commonwealth, notably the West Indies and, principally, in India. Far from being a know-it-all, he saw the 'Indian peasant farmers' as 'his professors'. He learned from them how to maintain and enhance soil fertility where extreme heat, rainfall etc occur and considered their kind of agriculture one of the best examples of intergenerational sustainability around. His book is a summary of all that he discovered, achieved and shared during his research life.Sir Albert's central thesis concerning sustainable agriculture is that, for many crops, the interaction between plant roots and soil fungi is critical. He was healthily skeptical of the use of chemical fertilisers, finding through experiment that such fertilisers are alone insufficient to maintain soil fertility. Biological fertilisers, most notably humus, are the key requirement in his eyes and much of the book is devoted to descriptions of how to optimise the production of this compost. A process he termed the Indore process (named after the institute in India where he carried out research for many years) is his lasting legacy to global agriculture and his long-term experiments on several crops show how yields can be increased sustainably through judicious use of humus during the growing cycle.The book should be read by all the know-it-all politicians who wish to ban domestic gardeners from mixing their own organic waste with farmyard waste (which may have been imposed as a means to appease chemical fertiliser producers). Their eyes might be opened to just what they have been doing with their HSE mantras.....assuming their minds are sufficiently scientific and intellectually developed to benefit from reading such a Chateau Mouton de Rothschild of the organic agricultural literature.....One hopes that sufficient numbers of organic gardeners will also read it to either open their eyes, confirm their own experiences or simply allow them to appreciate the work of a perhaps under-lauded member of the 20th century research community.

Very fit for research purposes

Writen in 1940. This man was 70 years ahead of his time. Look at current thinking on "no till" farming, zero input and "mob grazing" etc.Fantastic forethought.

gutes Buch, günstig