who said the answer lies in the soil
Arthur Fallowfield
title: Ralph Wightman text: 1971 at Dorchester Hospital, after a severe fall in which he had broken his skull. His address at the time was given as Tudor House, Puddletown. Wightman was the model for the countryman Arthur Fallowfield, a comic character created by Kenneth Williams in "Beyond Our Ken", notable for his Dorset accent and his catch-phrase "the answer lies in the soil". Ralph Wightman Ralph Wightman (26 July 1901 – 28 May 1971) was an English lecturer, journalist, author, and radio and television broadcaster. He wrote many books on farming and the countryside and in the 1950s and 1960s became a well-known title: Friedrich Albert Fallou text: Friedrich Albert Fallou Friedrich Albert Fallou (1794–1877) was the German founder of modern soil science. While working as a lawyer and tax assessor, Fallou established himself as an independent scientist, a recognized authority in the natural history of farm and forest soil. In 1862 he advanced the idea that soil was separate in nature from geology. Intent on establishing the study of soils as an independent science, Fallou introduced the term pedology (). Friedrich Albert Fallou came from an aristocratic French Huguenot family. He was the son of a judicial bailiff, and spent his childhood in Rochlitz and Grimma, where title: Soil text: had apparently been produced only by the addition of water, with no reduction in the soil's weight. John Woodward (d. 1728) experimented with various types of water ranging from clean to muddy and found muddy water the best, and so he concluded that earthy matter was the essential element. Others concluded it was humus in the soil that passed some essence to the growing plant. Still others held that the vital growth principal was something passed from dead plants or animals to the new plants. At the start of the 18th century, Jethro Tull demonstrated that it was beneficial to title: History of soil science text: History of soil science The early concepts of soil were based on ideas developed by a German chemist, Justus von Liebig (1803–1873), and modified and refined by agricultural scientists who worked on samples of soil in laboratories, greenhouses, and on small field plots. The soils were rarely examined below the depth of normal tillage. These chemists held the "balance-sheet" theory of plant nutrition. Soil was considered a more or less static storage bin for plant nutrients—the soils could be used and replaced. This concept still has value when applied within the framework of modern soil science, although a useful understanding title: Soil text: volatilisation (loss to the atmosphere as gases) or leaching. The history of the study of soil is intimately tied to humans' urgent need to provide food for themselves and forage for our animals. Throughout history, civilizations have prospered or declined as a function of the availability and productivity of their soils. The Greek historian Xenophon (450–355 BCE) is credited with being the first to expound upon the merits of green-manuring crops: "But then whatever weeds are upon the ground, being turned into earth, enrich the soil as much as dung." Columella's "Husbandry," circa 60 CE, advocated the use of lime