This site gives you an overview and the down­load link at the end of the first pub­li­ca­tion on Ver­ti­cal Farm­ing in 1915, writ­ten by Gilbert Ellis Bai­ley, A.M., E.m., Phd. Pro­fes­sor of Geol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, USA

The doc­u­ment intro­duces the con­cept of “Ver­ti­cal Farm­ing”, empha­siz­ing the use of explo­sives to enhance soil cul­ti­va­tion. Tra­di­tion­al farm­ing tools only work on the sur­face, but deep­er soil cul­ti­va­tion is nec­es­sary to increase the feed­ing zone of plant roots, improve soil mois­ture stor­age, and pro­mote bac­te­r­i­al activ­i­ty. The author advo­cates for the use of Du Pont’s Red Cross Farm Pow­der and Red Cross Stump­ing Pow­der as ide­al explo­sives for this purpose.

“Ver­ti­cal Farm­ing, to coin a name, is the keynote of a new agri­cul­ture that has come to stay, for inex­pen­sive explo­sives enable the farmer to farm deep­er, to go down to increase his acreage, and to secure larg­er crops.”

The doc­u­ment high­lights the ben­e­fits of ver­ti­cal farm­ing, such as increased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty per acre and the abil­i­ty to farm deep­er for larg­er crops. It sug­gests that these prac­tices can be applied uni­ver­sal­ly, poten­tial­ly rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing agri­cul­ture and ensur­ing con­tin­ued high prices for farm prod­ucts. Addi­tion­al­ly, it offers a free Farmer’s Hand­book of Explo­sives for fur­ther guidance.

(…) “Unavail­able Plant Foods. -Atten­tion has already been called to the large amounts of min­er­al plant food bound up in insol­u­ble min­er­als, and to the enor­mous amount of the high­est priced plant food (nitro­gen) that is present in the air but not direct­ly avail­able to the field crops as food. The changes that some of these must under­go in order that they can nour­ish the roots are chem­i­cal­ly very com­plex, but, in the prac­tice of the art of farm­ing, can be well con­trolled. The nitro­gen must be com­bined with oxy­gen. This change is most effec­tive­ly brought about by a cer­tain group of bac­te­ria which grows in knots on the roots of peas, beans, clovers, alfal­fa, and kin­dred plants. They breathe in the free nitro­gen gas and com­bine it with oth­er ele­ments in such a way that large amounts are fixed and held in the soil in a com­bined form that is very nour­ish­ing to suc­ceed­ing crops and also to the crop with which they grow. (…)

In bad­ly drained land the phos­pho­rus is often found com­bined with iron in lit­tle balls of “bog ore ” that are very insol­u­ble. Many oth­er exam­ples of com­bi­na­tions of plant foods could be brought out going fur­ther to show how the air, water and bac­te­ria assist the changes. In every case the ben­e­fits brought about demand deep stir­ring of the soil, such as is pro­duced by explod­ing small charges of slow pow­ders in the sub­soil and open­ing a way for the lib­er­a­tors of plant food. No oth­er prac­ti­cal method can bring about the desired results.” (…)

(…) “The few­er the lines of weak­ness the more close and clod­dy the struc­ture. What will gran­u­late soil to the depths quick­er than explo­sives? It is admit­ted that present machin­ery can only increase the feed­ing zone of the roots an inch or two. What can explo­sives do in this line? A cubic yard of hard soil has 6 faces and 9 square feet in each face, or a total of 54 square feet. Divide it into 1 foot cubes and there are 162 feet of sur­face. Break it into inch cubes and it presents 1944 square feet, or near­ly 1/20 of an acre of feed­ing sur­face for the roots.

A sin­gle car­tridge of explo­sive can eas­i­ly con­vert sev­er­al yards of com­pact and use­less hard­pan into half an acre of new feed­ing ground. Cost­ly, mas­sive, improved machin­ery enables the farmer to spread out his oper­a­tion, to move hor­i­zon­tal­ly, and han­dle more acreage in the same time, and he is ever eager to dou­ble and tre­ble his hold­ings of fer­tile soil. What is want­ed is some­thing that enables him to move ver­ti­cal­ly down and dou­ble his acreage, and dou­ble his yield by dou­bling the fer­til­i­ty of the soil, by dou­bling the depth of the feed­ing zone, by dou­bling the water sup­ply, by cul­ti­vat­ing the ground to dou­ble and tre­ble the for­mer depths.

“Ver­ti­cal Farm­ing,” to coin a name, is the keynote of a new agri­cul­ture that has come to stay, for inex­pen­sive explo­sives enable the farmer to farm deep­er, to go down to increase his acreage, and to secure larg­er crops. Instead of spread­ing out over more land he con­cen­trates on less land and becomes an inten­sive rather than an exten­sive agri­cul­tur­ist, and soon learns that it is more prof­itable to dou­ble the depth of bis fer­tile land than to dou­ble the area of his hold­ings, and he learns that his best aid and ser­vant in this work is a good explosive. 

Peace con­gress­es demand that swords be turned into prun­ing hooks. The farmer is busy turn­ing explo­sives from war to agri­cul­ture, from death deal­ing to life giv­ing work.” (…)