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P A thank you very much indeed for
being with us this morning. I'd like to start by possibly
investigating a point of view that I think many many of our listeners will be a
little bit hazy about. I know when I was at school myself,
we learned that the soil we've got is a precious resource and
once it's been eroded away, and we see all the erosion galleys around the place,
that topsoil is virtually lost forever. Now your own experiments have
shown that in fact you can grow, literally grow topsoil,
on previously very very barren areas. Perhaps you'd
the like to discuss this. How actually do you go about doing this, growing
topsoil
on previously very barren areas? Well first of all I'd
like to give an opposite view to the general one and say that the
most valuable deposit of chemical and mineral wealth on earth
is the subsoil, because
as much of it as is required,
and I'm not limiting that
to a few inches but to several feet, can be made
quite quickly, not slowly. This
subsoil is actually the deposit below the top soil as we know it. Is that right?
Yes
that is exactly it.
It's gone through the process of soil formation,
the aging process, so you not dealing with some solid rock that you've got
to
turn into soil in a couple a million years. The million years have
passed.
So the only stage that's left is the
very rapid stage of soil life.
Making the soil. All you got to do is feed the microbes.
Now you've virtually perfected that method of feeding the microbes. Tell us about it?
Well
originally we had poor soil or no soil.
So we aerated the soil and planted
pasture with it. To produce a pasture.
Every now and again we got a good pasture
that would disappear. So
once when we had a really good pasture, it only lasted about a year,
we tore it to pieces. We got a better one next year.
Then we tore it to pieces a bit deeper with a chisel plow in those days
and we got a better pasture but we had
seven or eight inches of soil in three years instead of no soil or just the skin of soil.
So what we're doing of course was
allowing the grasses and the clovers to grow to nearly the flowering stage
they're grateful for the young because the roots would not have gone down
far enough. You allow them to get up to near
flowering stage, the roots will have gone as deep as they can,
and if you've aerated a bit of the subsoil the roots will go down into the subsoil because
it will be moist and aerated. As soon as the
grass is mown or eaten off by stock
it suffers a shock and to get over the shock
it calls on the nutrients in the dead,
in the roots that were in reserve for the
great reproductive event of flowering and setting seed,
and a few days later
a new set of roots will start downwards but the old set of roots, that
newly dead roots of mixed grasses and clovers.
That is the perfect food for soil life and it's the perfect
means of introducing organics into the soil.
I think we've got to really emphasize here this aeration technique. Now use
a chisel plow. Just how does the chisel plow vary
from the vast acreages of paddocks that we see plowed
today? Well the chisel plow,
which we introduced to Australia 1951 or 2
has, seems to have led
to enormous numbers of them being sold
and also influencing other types of cultivators
and farmers to use the
scratch type implement instead of the moldboard, of course went out when the disc
came in and the disc
plow now is on its way out with the
various versions of the chisel plow with the
scratch plow. It's like the old Egyptian stick plow of course.
What I'm trying to get at here is that the chisel plow actually does not turn
the soil over, does it?
No
it doesn't turn the soil over but we
designed another implement in 1974. We got the
Prince Philip prize for it, which
leaves the horizon of the soil more in place than a chisel plow does.
Actually you can run it through eight inches through a pasture and you look back and hardly
seen that you've been there.
With sort of plow was that?
It's called the Bunyip Slipper Imp with Shakaerator.
The Bunyip Slipper Imp with Shakaerator.
Alright tell us about that, that sounds pretty tremendous.
Well it arose very early in the piece
when we struck trouble with the chisel plow in certain types of clay.
No matter how much weight you put on them
it just wouldn't get down deep enough to
give you a reservoir of moisture down there.
I was really inspired
to do something about it when I wrote The City Forest in 1971.
And we got on with it then but
it has a easier entry into the ground
and it splits and shatters upwards.
The vibrator greatly assists it do that.
This vibrator is just a sort of an off center weight on the PTO part of
the plow is it?
Well its inspired by a wobbly wheel on the
front of a motor car,
was the idea and
it's one of those things that, if you have a bit of luck with it, it worked right first time.
Almost most first time.
Usually these thing come after a lot of mistakes.
They're the foundations of any successes usually
but this one came very easily and we had luck with the plow
in that we designed it to do certain things and
through accident and a little bit of luck we got it to do lot better than we
ever anticipated.
P A you mentioned that the new plow, the Bunyip etc,
keeps the soil profiles intact.
I wonder if you could explain to us why that's important?
I can tell you of a incident that happened many years ago when I was
mostly connected with tin mining. I was out on a property
and the owner told me that
he'd employed a young Englishman and the weather was good for plowing and he was going to town so
would he plow up this twenty-acre paddock.
He showed me the paddock twenty years later and it hardly
grew a weed. What the
Englishman had done is what they do in England he turned it over with the moldboard
plow.
So he'd turned the dead top soil, the
little bit of soil underneath
a body of dead topsoil and nothing happened.
But by keeping their horizons in place
you have the fertility and the microbes
aerated and in place and they'll move downwards.
And you don't want to go too deep in the first instance. It would be like trying to make
beer with not enough of the ingredients. It would be too watery so
you limit the depth to about
what you can aerate right through, that is from shank to shank.
P A I once heard someone say that if
they did nothing else, with a little bit of money that they had,
and this person was one of your Keyline proponents,
someone who had a farm, if there was no money for a dam,
no money for a gate valve, if they did nothing else
but chisel pattern plow
their land, that they would increase the water absorption and the water storage
on that property.
Would you care to comment on that?
By aerating the soil properly we put it in a condition to take in
moisture
and if the whole of Australia was aerated just
another three or four inches deep, it would hold more water than the Snowy Mountain
Scheme.
So water
becomes in Keyline the basis of planning
because of the natural factors of climate,
the heat and light of the sun, the air and the water and its various movements.
There's only one of those factors
that can be planned for that will improve the use of all the others.
You improve the sun, you improve the air
by controlling the water and taking water into the soil when it's needed.
So the basis of Keyline planning is
the natural landscape with it's own water lines
the new water lines that control all the water
when those lines are in
they position the roads, the roads automatically give you the subdivisions
and within the subdivisions you start your
soil treatment. These man made lines
or water control
together with the water lines of the landscapes that the
water lines of the small valleys and the little creeks
and streams and rivers
form a pattern of water lines
which are channels to transfer water perhaps to dams
others to transfer it from the dams for irrigation
other lines usually up the gentle ridges are offered
transfer of water to a lower area or sometimes from pumping from a source that's
low down for use higher in the landscape.
That gives you the pattern. We called it the Keyline grid
and all planning, it's based on a grid system
because it has to be. You subdivide the land so you've got to get at it
so it's always agreed, it's not the grid that can
be wrong as a grid, it's the
manner of the grid. So our grid
is a natural water line grid
plus the control line grids. So you then have a patten for the landscape
and the landscape
imposes itself on the planner. The planner doesn't put geometrical patterns on the
land in Keyline.
I'm a little bit confused about how ongoing
this process is. How regular it has to be. Do you
plow once a year or more often than that
P A? Well there are various circumstances that arise
for instance pasture, a mixed pasture
is probably the quickest means of improving soil.
Now under irrigation conditions you can cultivate
five or six times in the one year if you wanted to
we've done that to see if we could destroy the soil by
over cultivation, with a chisel plow it was in those days,
and we found that we don't destroy the world
the thing by cultivating, the soil by cultivation,
you just make it happen. But that's in irrigation conditions in the summertime.
Now if it's ordinary rainfall conditions and your most reliable rain is
in the autumn,
then for the first three years you cultivate each autumn,
so it's a process for three years. But then you have to watch the soil because
everything that happens in farming is tending to compact
soil. The implements, the cattle
all tending to rob the soil of its air.
So you watch the soil. When you see some of the
grasses that like sourish conditions start to come in. Alright you need air, so you do
it again,
maybe five years later. But all the time you have to watch
soil and read the soil. Now under the conditions
where they're cropping. Well nature make can't make soil without
legumes, whether its a rainforest soil or natural pasture.
And by legumes you mean what sort of crops?
Any legume but to the clovers in the
tree falls and that sort of thing, so
we would never plant a wheat
crop. It would always have its companion legume,
because there's something magical about the dead
roots of legumes that seems to trigger everything off rapidly.
I think that you should just repeat that. I think that's a very important point. You
don't
just planted a wheat crop on its own. You have
another crop with it. Is that right?. That's correct.
In fact the big
thing to decide then is to select the companion legume or you may have
two varieties of legume
to plant with every grass crop.
That includes all your grains as well as your sugar cane. They're all grass crops.
So you plant always
a legume with the wheat. You just pick a legume that's not going to interfere with the
planting
or the harvesting of the wheat.
The soil will continuously improve then with the
companion legume. Not quite as fast as with a
mixed pasture. That's the best to the lot. But soil will improve and deepen,
as deep as you want it, as long as you keep your companion legume going.
The earth is sufficient.
Can you use any legume with any crop or do you have to match
a particularly legume with a particular crop?
Any legume, just about any legume, will suit the
growing of the crop but the important thing is it mustn't interfere with harvesting.
For instance, one farmer friend
grew a barley crop with Dolichos Lablab.
He was a Keyliner, this man, and doesn't use fertilizers,
artificial fertilizers, and he doesn't use sprays.
He spends most of his spare time, he's a beach buggy fan
running round on Flinders Island I think it is.
However he grew with
barley, Dolichos Lablab, which is a vine
type tropical legume.
He had a look at it some time before it was ready to strip and he found that
the legume had climbed up the storks
through all the barley and it was just a mess and he didn't think he would take anything
off it.
But just as,
just before the crop was due to harvest,
the Dolichos Lablab set seed and died and broke up into little pieces
about half an inch long and all dropped down to the ground and he took
a crop that was 50 percent higher in the one year
from the Dolichos Lablab and the combination of barley.
He also has a another crop he grows with snail
clover, which most people haven't heard about. So the important thing
is the practical, practical one of being able
to harvest and sow the legume that goes with
whatever grass and barley's a grass.
So do those people who for say to you that it's virtually impossible to grow
large crops of any of our
staple grasses like wheat, without the use of
fertilizers and chemicals and herbicides,
you would say that this is completely wrong? It is completely wrong.
There's a difficult period of changing over
because you can't just stop using fertilizer and do nothing else.
You won't get a crop. So the
little difficult part is just the changeover
but if you
have someone else's experience of having done it and made a mistake and found
the right one of course it's a big help.
But no crop should be planted without a legume.
That's a very very important point. I'm sure that many of our listeners will
not have realized this. I find it fascinating myself and I'm sure that a
lot of people will be
interested to hear that. Well
P A Yeomans, you're going to be actually addressing a
seminar on Thursday the 26th of April.
This is being organized by the Murray Valley League
and it's in Albury and I believe that we've got another
very very distinguished guest from overseas. Some of us may have seen a
story about him in Thursday morning's Age (Melbourne newspaper)
but part of your own speech, which I'd like you to read to us here,
gives a nice succinct, very
concise view of what Keyline is and perhaps we can say a little bit about
Dr Sopper after this, but
just read us a little bit if you're your summary what you
maintain Keyline really is. Briefly
the foundation of Keyline is a planning medium,
the same as those for the natural landscape, namely
the shapes the shapes and form of the land and the particular climate
that have been applied, that have applied the finishing touches,
smoothed it off you know. These are the more permanent things.
Of the factors that determine climate, such as the heat
and light of the sun, with the air and
water and its various movements, one alone can best
be manipulated to gain greater landscape value from the others.
Of course it's water, The control of water for its beneficial use thus becomes the
supreme basis of planning.
The first objective of planning has to be the enhancement and enrichment of the land.
Since all planning interrupts the natural tree like
branching and joining pattern of the little valleys, the small creeks,
the streams and the rivers, planning also interrupts the pattern of water for rain
flowing over the land.
It has to. But it's not the interruption that's wrong, but the manner of it.
Planning of the land can lead either towards it's enhancement
and the enrichment of the environment or to its
degradation. I think very very true words. Planning I think,
as we well know here in Melbourne, is sometimes a little bit out of control.
Tell us here. We've been very fortunate to have in Australia
a visit by Dr William Sopper.
Perhaps you can tell us why he is such an eminent person in his own field
and what he's going to be talking about up in the Marray Valley
League on the 26th of April.
Well Dr William E Sopper
is professor of forest hydrology at the University of Pennsylvania,
near a city called State College in that state.
I've had the pleasure touring with him and
talking to him, over a few days last week,
and I think I'm also going to introduce him
as the principal speaker at the symposium that's being held on the 26th
at Albury. It goes all day. Is this open to the public by the way?
It's open to the public and you just have to bring along forty-five dollars,
but if you only want the papers afterwards, it's twenty-five dollars.
Why he's so
famous in America
is because of experiments that have been conducted at State College
where they had two great problems.
One, the stream through the city
had became badly polluted
and second the aquifers from which they do they draw their water
were rapidly depleting and getting deeper and deeper and less and less.
So the problem was to
purify the effluent and return it to the groundwater
for reuse.
Its been so successful that the United States government now
pay eighty-five percent
towards this type of treatment as opposed to any other
treatment. You must understand that the normal
first and second stage of treatment goes through
but this replaces the tertiary
treatment which is very very expensive and from the
accounts of Dr Sopper, not too successful.
So
I'll be introducing Dr Sopper on Thursday.
Now they're going to be trying to solve
a problem which I consider to be very very major one
and that is pollution from a major industry up in the Albury
area. I think this has very strong local
significance. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about this?
Well the new
newsprint mill
that Australian Newsprint Mills are putting in at Albury. The construction's
already started. It will be discharging about twenty-two
megalitres of water per
day. That's around between 4 and 5 million (imp. gallons per day),
which incidentally is about what you get from a city of
sixty to seventy thousand people. They'll be taking that water from the river and
discharging it back into the river.
With pollutants? With the pollutants. It wont be a bad polluting plant in that
it's a mechanical and thermal
process for the paper making, not a highly chemical one and but still
there will be materials in it that
we believe should be taken out of it. The Murray Valley
League's principle aim now
is the purity of the Murray waters.
They were behind the irrigation water and
Sir William Hudson (Commissioner of the Snowy Mountains Scheme) said there wouldn't have been any Snowy Mountain Scheme except for the
Murray Valley League.
But their principle aim now is purity of the waters and
the Murray Valley League, of which I've got,
I am on the executive. I'm quite proud of it,
is making this their project to
see if we can persuade the powers that be and the mills
to put in a City Forest which is the Keyline
version of land treatment for sewage effluent.
Just very very briefly here. What we're doing is
going to be using the effluent
and we're going to be distributing it over the land along the principles of
Keyline. Is that right?
The aim is to put a City Forest
according to the Keyline book of 1971, which was called The City Forest,
and return most of the water back, because it doesn't take a lot of
water to maintain the forest, although they are typical of
high rainfall areas, so
it will go through the forest and the forest soil
and come out like mountain spring water. Well thank you very much indeed Mr P A
Yeomans.
And if anyone would like to know any more about this
seminar which is being held on Thursday the 26th of April
in Albury, with two very prominent speakers at least,
I'm not certain of the other speakers, they can get in touch with me Bruce
Hedge via 3CR here
in Melbourne 419 2569 (no longer current).
Thanks very much indeed Mr Yeomans and we'll be hearing
more from you on future programs hopefully.