Slash-and-burn agriculture

“ The burning of logging and mining camps and farm buildings, the loss to the country in the destruction of timber and young tree growth, is of yearly occurrence. Every fall, not only in Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Wyoming, but up and down the Pacific coast and all over the Rocky Mountain country fires burn great holes in the forests and destroy the national wealth. ”

“ Smoke was rising from the remains of burned villages, the fields were bare of cattle driven off by marauding bands, harvests remained ungathered because the tillers of the soil had either fled for safety to the larger towns or been forced to take up arms with one of the contending factions. ”

“ Our farmers and ranchers face significant challenges and uncertainty, from inclement weather to damaging insects. They also face health and safety dangers, from exposure to chemicals and the operation of machinery to tending livestock. In 1999, the agriculture industry suffered more than 770 deaths and 150,000 disabling injuries. ”

“ Brands taken from the bonfires preserve houses from [pg 141] being struck by lightning; and the ashes increase the fertility of the fields, protect them from mice, and mixed with the drinking-water of cattle make the animals thrive and ensure them against plague. As the flames die down, young and old leap over them, and cattle are sometimes driven through the smouldering embers. In some places tar-barrels or wheels wrapt in straw used to be set on fire, and then sent rolling down the hillside. ”

“ If a fire occur in a stable or cow-house, surrounded with other buildings of the same description, or with the produce of a farm, there is much danger. The cattle and horses should be immediately removed ”

“ Three of our greatest money crops—corn, cotton and tobacco—require that the earth shall, throughout the summer, be loose and even furrowed with the cultivator, which prepares the ground for washing away, and by its furrow starts the gully. The second factor in this peculiarly destructive agriculture is the fact of our emphasis of rainfall in summer. Third in the list of factors of destruction is the rainfall unit, the thunder shower, which dumps water, hundreds of tons per hour on every hillside acre. ”

“ Probably 90 per cent of all uncontrolled cuttings are burnt over, which retards the second crop at least from fifty to one hundred years and perhaps permanently changes the composition of the forest. Fires may be set by loggers while still at work on the area or several years after by lightning, campers, or locomotives. By piling the brush and burning it in wet weather, or in snow, when there is no danger of the fire spreading, all inflammable material is removed, and the second growth can come up without serious risk of being destroyed. ”

“ Then too, it leaves the field full of holes, that must be filled; and plowing the hard packed soil around old roots is no joke.
If instead of pulling the stumps, you burn them out, the intense heat required destroys the chief fertile elements of the soil all around the fire. After all your hard work you will leave a burned field instead of new, fertile soil.
You can dynamite all those stumps for about one-third the cost of pulling and chopping them up. ”

“ Fire-wood is so scarce in the country that a great portion of the straw, cotton stalks, and grass, which would go to manure the fields, is used for firing, and, therefore, the plan of growing manure for the [Pg 309] land is forced upon the farmers by necessity. ”

“ They ran up fences, mustered stray cattle, and in the evening brought back pitiful accounts of beasts burned to death in the gullies and dry creek-beds. When they sat with the women round the fire in Steve's kitchen, their great, green-hide boots steaming before it, breathless stories of fights with the fires were told. Most of the men had been away taking cattle to water when the homesteads were attacked. ”

“ As they drove rapidly along through the sunlight, over the land just scored and torn up by the stampede, they passed dead and injured animals that, weaker than the others, had fallen and been trampled and burned. Few horses and cattle had suffered, but, beginning at the draw, the sheep were pitifully plentiful. Everywhere smoke floated up in tiny threads from smoldering buffalo-chips, and clumps of weeds burned damply, only now and then bursting into flame.
At last, with a shout of joy, the biggest brother made out the farm-house ”

“ This yearly burning of the grass was claimed by the Todas to improve it, and they maintained that their cattle were deteriorating for want of good fodder. Government ruled that the grass on the plateau has been burnt by the inhabitants at pleasure for many years without any appreciable damage to forest growth, and the practice should not be disturbed. ”

“ But the herbs and grasses often grow so dry in summer that the most trivial accident—such as a lighted match flung carelessly away, or the ashes dropped from a hunter’s pipe—will kindle the most awful conflagrations, and the flames will spread devouringly over leagues of open ground, consuming trees and shrubs, and burning to death the cattle or wild animals which haply fall within their range. ”

“ During the warm months, however, they erected huts of larger dimensions, roofing them with green boughs, and provender for their cattle being plentiful, remained stationary. To defend their flocks and herds from the cold, which is there always severe during the night, they kindled immense fires close to their doors, which, emitting too great a flame when fanned by tempestuous winds, sometimes caught their combustible dwellings, and endangered the lives both of themselves and their cattle. ”

“ It is admitted that, besides the direct injury to the public health, noxious factory gases are chargeable with doing serious damage to agriculture. Cattle die from grazing on poisoned herbage, farms become parched up, yellow, and cannot be tenanted ”

“ A few weeks of fine balmy weather in January and February followed the distressing season of wintry storms, the cattle taking to the short buffalo-grass and rapidly recuperating. But just when we felt that the worst was over, simultaneously half a dozen prairie fires broke out in different portions of the pasture, calling every man to a fight that lasted three days. Our enemies, not content with havoc wrought by the elements, were again in the saddle, striking in the dark and escaping before dawn, inflicting injuries on dumb animals in harassing their owners. ”

“ Sheep have been excluded and cattle have been limited; falling and decaying timber, the growth of vegetation from year to year, and the accumulation of underbrush and debris have continued; and we have gone on conserving our forests in such a way that we have been accumulating fuel and the elements of destruction, piling up wrath against the day of wrath, until the fires, in spite of precautions, have started, and the destruction that has resulted is inevitable. ”

“ The extent of mischief occasioned by these frightful contentions of the elements is often very great; and it is with fear and trembling that, after the storm has passed away, the owners of live-stock go out to survey the ravages it has made;—trees torn up by the roots, rocks precipitated from their foundations, the soil and the vegetation having been borne along with them in their descent to some dark abyss, and sheep or poultry lying dead upon the ground—are among the usual casualties; while sometimes there is added the still more heart-rending destruction of human life. ”

“ Because it is easier to burn a slashing than to pile and burn; or when a ground burn is desirable, because it is easier to take chances than to clear a fire line around the area and have a force of men present; because burning at a dry, dangerous time will be cleaner and thus save work after the fire; inexperience, coupled with unwillingness to take advice from the experienced—these and like reasons are responsible for the destruction of lives and property worth over and over again the sum that was saved by the attempted economy. ”

“ As burning proceeds more turf is added to the outside of the heaps in such a manner as to allow little access of air. Every care should be taken to burn and char the sod thoroughly without permitting the heap to blaze. The ashes should be spread as soon as possible and covered by a shallow ploughing. The land is then usually sown with some rapidly growing green crop, such as rape, or with turnips. ”

“ Whereas, an extended drought and other natural disasters in feed grain-producing areas of the United States have caused significant reductions in feed grain supplies and severe hardship to livestock producers ”

“ Occasionally the smoke from a peripatetic threshing-machine would darken the air round some busy farm, and at times can be noticed another less pleasing smoke, as some slovenly farmer adopts the wasteful agency of fire to get rid of his surplus straw. Frequent cropping of the same cereal, either oats or wheat without rotation, has produced its inevitable result in some places here, as it will elsewhere; but why farmers anywhere will disregard the plain teachings of experience and common sense, goes beyond my comprehension. ”

“ Fire destroys timber utterly, injures it so that it is subject to insect and fungi attacks, lowers the grade of the timber, destroys or seriously injures reproduction, destroys humus and lowers the productive capacity of the soil. There is no way in which burning over a woodland improves the character of the forest. Stock have a very injurious effect on trees, especially young growth. Some stock eat up the nuts and berries and seeds which are the means of reproducing the forest. ”

“ Owing to the fact that the grass was so dry that no cattle would feed on it, there were no steers in the immediate vicinity of the blaze Had the fodder been cut it would have made excellent hay, but it would need to be cut green to bring this about. As it was, the tall grass had just naturally dried up as it attained its growth.
"It doesn't take even as much as a blaze like this to start a stampede," said Bud, as he and his cousins rode nearer to the burning grass, They could feel the heat of it, now. "It's queer how frightened animals are of fire," went on the rancher's son. ”

“ These burnings were defended on the plea that when the old and coarse coating of heath was consumed, young and tender growths would spring up and afford excellent browsing for cattle; but where the furze is very large and old, the fire, penetrating to the very roots, burns the ground itself; so that when an old common or ancient underwoods are burnt, nothing is to be seen for hundreds of acres but smother and desolation, the whole extent of the clearance looking like the cinders of an active volcano. ”

“ While others say, burning year after year is hurtful to the soil, and burns out the grass roots; also that decayed vegetation is better than ashes for a sandy soil.
These fires have been a great hindrance to the growth of forest trees. Fire-brakes are made by plowing a number of furrows, which is often planted in corn or potatoes. I fancy I would have a good wide potato patch all round my farm if I had one, and never allow fire on it. To prevent being caught in a prairie fire, one should always carry a supply of matches. ”

“ The corn, so carefully hidden in pits, has been burned; the water, on which life itself depends, has been polluted; the peasants are vainly digging in search of the hard-earned paper money, savings which they had buried beneath the soil, only to turn up a few black cinders! ”

“ The threshing over, the prairie glows at night with conflagrations as if a hostile army was marching through the land destroying as it went, but all that is happening is the burning of waste straw and refuse from the threshing, the ashes being the only fertiliser that the soil has so far received. ”

“ However, they damage the base of the trees and make it easy for fungi and insects to enter. They also burn the top soil and reduce the water-absorbing powers of the forest floor. In thick, dense evergreen forests where the carpet is heavy, fires are much more serious. They frequently kill the standing trees, burning trunks and branches and even following the roots deep into the ground. Dead standing trees and logs aid fires of this kind. The wind sweeps pieces of burning bark or rotten wood great distances to kindle new fires. ”

“ When a prairie has been dried up by a long drought the merest spark will produce a conflagration, carrying destruction over hundreds of miles; so it is with a popular movement, no one knows how it began or where it will end. Thus in the autumn of 1830, Agricultural England was panic-stricken by the news that the labourers were rising everywhere, destroying machines and setting fire to ricks. ”

“ Cattle-raising was once the principal industry in the interior, but has been almost extinguished by the devastating droughts and increasing aridity caused by the custom of annually burning over the campos to improve the grass. ”

“ Between these furrows we burnt the grass, an operation that required great care and yet must be done as expeditiously as possible to save time, labour and expense. A certain amount of wind must be blowing so as to insure a clean and rapid burn; but a high gusty wind is most dangerous, as the flames are pretty sure to jump the furrows, enter the pasture, and get away from you. ”

“ Without rational [39] direction, restraint or control, this agricultural mining goes on until the sources from which the profits are drawn are so depleted as to be no longer profitable. There is no home or competency for the farm boys in the lumber camp or on the great wheat farm. Here the rule is to take all and return nothing. After the ax and the binder, comes the fire to complete the wanton destruction. The shade-giving and moisture-conserving brush, stubble and straw, and all living plants, are destroyed, and nothing but the mineral matter, unmixed with surface humus, remains. ”