A Major History of Early Americans' Ideas about Conservation Fifty years after the Revolution, American farmers faced a crisis: the failing soils of the Atlantic states threatened the agricultural prosperity upon which the republic was founded. "Larding the Lean Earth" explores the tempestuous debates that erupted between "improvers, " intent on sustaining the soil of existing farms, and "emigrants, " who thought it wiser and more "American" to move westward as the soil gave out. "Larding the Lean Earth" is a signal work of environmental history and an original contribution to the study of antebellum America.