In Agriculture
Traditionally, land drains were formed in clay soils and peats by excavating a trench and forming a "tunnel" using flat stones. This was very labour intensive but could be often be done using free materials at hand. Typically they were two to three feet (600mm-900mm) below the surface. Agricultural land drains have to be installed sufficiently deep to avoid plough damage. Later short earthenware pipes were used laid edge to edge. These are still used. These can be laid in an excavated trench, or a horizontal hole is formed in the ground using a mole plough and the pipes are forced in by means of a hand or mechanical press. By this means, heavy wet soils, bogs and swamps could be rendered amendable to agriculture. Virtually all crops need a well drained soil to grow well.
Read more about this topic: Land Drains
Famous quotes containing the word agriculture:
“In past years, the amount of money that has had to be been spent on armaments, great and small, instead of on productive industry and agriculture and the arts, has been a disgrace to all of us in every part of the world.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“But the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil or the advantages of the market had induced to build towns. Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction, because of the perils of the state from nomadism.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)