Soil Improvers

In 1843 Martin Van Buren wrote that he spent much of his time devising ways and means to multiply the quantity and improve the quality of manure, reflecting his belief that farm practices were tied to political power. In the early years of the republic, Van Buren and others were known as soil improvers, seeking to reverse the common practice of moving west to new lands by creating a more sustainable agricultural system and preventing the depopulation of the Northeast from weakening its political influence. At Lindenwald, the rich soil resulted from centuries of interaction between natural forces and human cultivation. Historian Steven Stoll explained that the soil improvers saw the farm field as part of a delicate system of return powered by the sun and managed by cultivators who understood soil as the totality of matter passing through their hands. Jesse Buel, once editor of the Argus, the official newspaper of Van Buren's Albany Regency, later turned to agricultural reform, helped found the New York State Agricultural Society, served as a trustee of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and edited The Cultivator, a widely read antebellum farm journal whose motto was to improve the soil and the mind. Van Buren's land is now farmed by Roxbury Farm, a Community Supported Agriculture operation that uses sustainable methods, including composted manure, cover crops, crop rotation, and sophisticated plowing techniques, in ways that would have been recognized by nineteenth-century soil improvers.

Kinderhook, New York · United States