The Story of the Soil Part 38

The latest Year Book of the Department of Agriculture (1908 ) furnishes the average yields of wheat and corn for four successive ten-year periods, from 1866 to 1905. By combining these into two twenty-year periods this record of forty years shows that the average yield of wheat for the United States increased one bushel per acre, while the average yield of corn decreased one and one-half bushels per acre, according to these two twenty-year averages.

If we consider only the statistics for the North-Central states, extending from Ohio to Kansas and from "Egypt" to Canada, the same forty-year record shows the average yield of wheat to have increased one-half bushel per acre, while the average yield of corn decreased two bushels per acre.

Thus, notwithstanding the great areas of rich virgin soils brought under cultivation in the West and Northwest during the last forty years, notwithstanding the abandonment of great areas of wornout lands in the East and Southeast during the same years, notwithstanding the enormous extension of dredge ditching and tile drainage, and, notwithstanding the marked improvement in seed and in the implements of cultivation, the average yield per acre of the two great grain crops of the United States has not even been maintained, the decrease in corn being greater than the increase in wheat, and not only for the entire United States, but also for the great new states of the corn belt and wheat belt.

( Seasonal variations are so great that shorter periods than twenty-year averages cannot be considered trustworthy for yield per acre.)

Meanwhile, the total population of the United States increased from thirty-eight millions in 1870 to seventy-six millions in 1900, or an increase of one hundred per cent. in thirty years; and the only means by which we have been able to feed this increase in population has been by increasing our acreage of cultivated crops and by decreasing our exportation of foodstuffs; and I need not remind you that the limit to our relief is near in both of these directions.

But have we decreased our exportation of phosphate? Oh, no. On the contrary, under the soothing influence of the most pleasing and acceptable doctrine that our soil is an indestructible, immutable a.s.set, which cannot be depleted, our exportation of rock phosphate has increased during the years of the present century from six hundred and ninety thousand tons in 1900, to one-million three hundred and thirty thousand tons in 1908, an increase of practically one hundred per cent., in accordance with the published reports of the United States Geological Survey.

But I am writing to you, Mr. Hill, not only to thank you for what you have said and shown in the twenty-eight pages above referred to, but also in part to repay my obligation to you by giving you some correct information, which I am altogether confident you will appreciate; namely, that, while you are a graduate student or past master in your knowledge of the supply and demand of the world's markets, you are just entering the kindergarten cla.s.s in the study of soil fertility, as witness the following extracts from the one erroneous page of your article.

"Right methods of farming, without which no agricultural country such as this can hope to remain prosperous, or even to escape eventual poverty, are not complicated and are within the reach of the most modest means. They include a study of soils and seeds, so as to adapt the one to the other; a diversification of industry, including the cultivation of different crops and the raising of live stock; a careful rotation of crops, so that the land will not be worn out by successive years of single cropping; intelligent fertilizing by the system of rotation, by cultivating leguminous plants, and, above all, by the economy and use of every particle of fertilizing material from stock barns and yards; a careful selection of grain used for seed; and, first of all perhaps in importance, the subst.i.tution of the small farm, thoroughly tilled, for the large farm, with its weeds, its neglected corners, its abused soil, and its thin product. This will make room for the new population whose added product will help to restore our place as an exporter of foodstuffs. Let us set these simple principles of the new method out again in order:

_"First--_The farmer must cultivate no more land than he can till thoroughly. With less labor he will get more results. Official statistics show that the net profit from one crop of twenty bushels of wheat to the acre is as great as that from two of sixteen, after original cost of production has been paid.

_"Second--_There must be rotation of crops. Ten years of single cropping will pretty nearly wear out any but the richest soil. A proper three or fiveyear rotation of crops actually enriches the land.

_"Third--_There must be soil renovation by fertilizing; and the best fertilizer is that provided by nature herself--barnyard manure.

Every farmer can and should keep some cattle, sheep, and hogs on his place. The farmer and his land cannot prosper until stock raising becomes an inseparable part of agriculture. Of all forage fed to live stock at least one-third in cash value remains on the land in the form of manure that soon restores worn-out soil to fertility and keeps good land from deteriorating. By this system the farm may be made and kept a source of perpetual wealth."

Your _first principle _will be agreed to and emphasized by all; but it should be kept in mind that the large farms are frequently better tilled than the small farms. The $200 land in the corn belt is usually "worked for all that's in it." It is tile-drained and well cultivated, and the best of seed is used. If more thorough tillage would increase the profits, these corn-belt farmers would certainly practice it.

It ought to be known (1) that as an average of six years the Illinois Experiment Station produced seventy and three-tenths bushels of corn per acre with the ordinary four cultivation, and only seventy-two and eight-tenths bushels with additional cultivation even up to eight times; and (2) that the average yield of corn in India on irrigated land varies from seven bushels in poor years to twelve bushels in good seasons, and this is where the average farm is about three acres in size.

One Illinois farmer with a four-horse team raises more corn than ten Georgia farmers with a mule a piece on the same total acreage Fertile soil and competent labor are the great essentials in crop production. A mere increase in country population does not increase the productive power of the soil.

The farms down here in "Egypt" average much smaller than those in the corn belt of Illinois, but our "Egyptian" farms are nevertheless poorly tilled as a rule and some of them are already becoming abandoned for agricultural purposes.

Certainly the land should always be well tilled, but tillage makes the soil poorer, not richer. Tillage liberates plant food but adds none. "A little farm well tilled" is all right if well manured, but it should not be forgotten that the men who consider "Ten Acres Enough" are market gardeners, or truck farmers, who are not satisfied until in the course of six or eight years they have applied to their land about two hundred tons of manure per acre, all made from crops grown on other lands.

All the manure produced in all the states would provide only thirty tons per acre for the farm lands of Illinois. In round numbers there are eighty million cattle and horses in the United States, and our annual corn crop is harvested from one hundred million acres. All the manure produced by all domestic animals would barely fertilize the corn lands with ten tons per acre if none whatever were lost or wasted; and, if all farm animals were figured on the basis of cattle, there is only one head for each ten acres of farm land in the United States.

Your _second principle _is, that "a proper three or five-year rotation of crops actually enriches the land."

I hope the G.o.d of truth and a long-suffering, misguided people will forgive you for that false teaching. If there is any one practice the value of which is fully understood by the farmers and landowners in the Eastern states and in all old agricultural countries, it is the practice of crop rotation. Indeed, the rotation of crops is much more common and much better understood and much more fully appreciated in the East than it is in the corn belt. Practically all we know of crop rotation we have learned from the East. Every old depleted agricultural country has worn out the soil by good systems of crop rotation. I once took a legal option of an "abandoned" farm in Maryland (beautiful location, two miles from a railroad station, gently undulating upland loam, at $10 per acre) that had been worn out under a four-year rotation of corn, wheat, meadow and pasture. A few acres of tobacco were usually grown in one corner of the corn field, and clover and timothy were regularly used for meadow and pasture. Wheat, tobacco and livestock were sold, and manure was applied for tobacco and so far as possible for corn also. In the later years of the system the ordinary commercial fertilizer was also applied for the wheat at the usual rate of two hundred pounds per acre, this having become a "necessity" toward the end of this slow but sure system of land ruin.

The "simple principles" of your "new method" were understood and practiced in Roman agriculture two thousand years ago; and they included not only thorough tillage, careful seed selection, regular crop rotation, and the use of farm manure, but also the use of green manures. Thus Cato wrote:

"Take care to have your wheat weeded twice--with the hoe, and also by hand."

And again Cato wrote:

"Wherein does a good system of agriculture consist? In the first place, in thorough plowing; in the second place, in thorough plowing; and, in the third place, in manuring."

Varro, who lived at the same time as Cato, wrote as follows:

"The land must rest every second year, or be sown with lighter kinds of seeds, which prove less exhausting to the soil. A field is not sown entirely for the crop which is to be obtained the same year, but partly for the effect to be produced in the following; because there are many plants which, when cut down and left on the land, improve the soil. Thus lupines, for instance, are plowed into a poor soil in lieu of manure. Horse manure is about the best suited for meadow land, and so in general is that of beasts of burden fed on barley; for manure made from this cereal makes the gra.s.s grow luxuriantly."

Virgil wrote in his _Georgics:_

"Still will the seeds, tho chosen with toilsome pains, Degenerate, if man's industrious hand Cull not each year the largest and the best."

It was in 1859 that Baron von Liebig wrote as follows, regarding these and similar _ancient _teachings:

"All these rules had, as history tells us, only a temporary effect; they hastened the decay of Roman agriculture; and the farmer ultimately found that he had exhausted all his expedients to keep his fields fruitful and reap remunerative crops from them. Even in Columella's time, the produce of the land was only fourfold. It is not the land itself that const.i.tutes the farmer's wealth, but it is in the const.i.tuents of the soil, which serve for the nutrition of plants, that this wealth truly consists."

Suppose, Mr. Hill, that a successful American farmer should tell you that your bank account will actually increase if you will give from three to five members of your family the privilege of writing checks instead of following the single checking system. "But," you will ask, "doesn't rotation produce a larger aggregate yield of crops than the single crop system?" Certainly, and, likewise, a rotation of the check book will produce a larger aggregate of the checks written; but the ultimate effect on the bank deposit is the same as on the natural deposit of plant food in the soil, and finally the checks will not be honored. Indeed, it would be a fine sort of perpetual motion if we could actually enrich the soil by the simple rotation of crops, and thus make something out of nothing.

Consider, for example, the common three-year rotation, corn, wheat, and clover. A fifty-bushel crop of corn removes twelve pounds of phosphorus from the soil; the twenty-five bushel wheat crop draws out eight pounds; and then the two-ton crop of clover withdraws ten pounds, making thirty pounds required for this simple rotation. The most common type of land in St. Mary county, Maryland, after two hundred years of farming, contains phosphorus enough in the soil for five rotations of this simple sort. Mathematically that is all the further traffic in rotations that soil can bear. Agriculturally that soil has refused to bear any sort of traffic, whether single or in rotations, and has been abandoned for farm use except where fertilized.

These crops would remove from the soil one hundred and twenty-four pounds of nitrogen in the corn and wheat, and the roots and stubble of the clover would contain forty pounds of nitrogen. Now, if the soil furnishes seventy-six pounds of nitrogen to the corn crop and forty-eight pounds to the wheat crop, will it furnish forty pounds to the clover crop, or as much as remains in the roots and stubble?

If so, how does the rotation actually enrich the soil in nitrogen?

You will be interested to know that there are many exact records of the effect upon the soil of the rotation of crops. This particular three-year rotation has been followed at the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station for thirteen years, and the average yield of wheat has been, not twenty bushels, not sixteen bushels, but eleven bushels per acre, where no plant food was applied; although where farm manure was used the wheat yielded twenty bushels, and with manure and fine-ground natural rock phosphate added the average yield of wheat for the thirteen years has been more than twenty-six bushels per acre. The corresponding yields for corn are thirty-two, fifty-three and sixty-one bushels, and for clover they are one and two-tenths, one and six-tenths and two and two-tenths tons of hay per acre.

You will wish to know also that the Ohio Station has conducted a five-year rotation of corn, oats, wheat, clover, and timothy for the last fifteen years, both with and without the application of commercial plant food. As an average of the fifteen years the unfertilized and fertilized tracts have produced, respectively:

30 and 48 bushels of corn

32 and 50 bushels of oats and 27 bushels of wheat .9 and 1.6 tons of clover

1.3 and 1.8 tons of timothy

In 1908 the unfertilized land produced nine-tenths ton of clover, while land treated with farm manure produced three and two-tenths tons per acre.

You will welcome the information that the average yield of wheat on an Illinois experiment field down here in "Egypt," in a four-year rotation, including both cowpeas and clover, has been eleven and one-half bushels on unfertilized land, fourteen bushels where legume crops have been plowed under, and twenty-seven bushels where limestone and phosphorus have been added with the legume crops turned under; and that the aggregate value of the four crops, corn, oats, wheat, and clover, from another "Egyptian" farm, has been $25.97 per acre on unfertilized land, and $54.24 where limestone and phosphorus have been applied.

In your very busy and very successful railroad experience, you may have overlooked the reports of the Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station, showing the results of a four-year rotation of crops that has been conducted with very great care for more than a quarter of a century. These, you will agree, are exactly such absolute data as we sorely need just now when facing the stupendous problem of changing from an agricultural system whose equal has never been known for rapidity of soil exhaustion to a system which shall actually enrich the land. By averaging the results from the first twelve years and also those from the second twelve years, in this rotation of corn, oats, wheat, and hay (clover and timothy), we find that the yields have decreased as follows:

Corn decreased 34 per cent.

Oats decreased 31 per cent.

Wheat decreased 4 per cent.

Hay decreased 29 per cent.

Appalling, is it not? It is the best information America affords in answer to the question, Will the rotation of crops actually enrich the land?

No, Sir. We cannot make crops nor bank accounts out of nothing. The rotation of crops does not enrich the soil, does not even maintain the fertility of the soil. On the contrary, the rotation of crops, like the rotation of your check book, actually depletes the soil more rapidly than the single system; and, if you ever have your choice between two farms of equal original fertility, one of which has been cropped with wheat only, and the other with a good three or five-year rotation, for fifty years, take my advice and choose the "worn-out" wheat farm. Then adopt a good system of cropping with a moderate use of clover, and you will soon discover that your land is not worn out, but "almos' new lan" as a good Swede friend of mine reported who made a similar choice. But beware of the land that has been truly worn out under a good rotation, which avoids the insects and diseases of the single crop system, and also furnishes regularly a moderate amount of clover roots which decay very rapidly and thus stimulate the decomposition of the old humus and the liberation of mineral plant food from the soil.

Perhaps you have heard of Rothamsted. If not, your kindergarten teacher is at fault. A four-year rotation of crops has been followed on Agdell field for more than sixty years. An average of the crop yields of the last twenty years reveals:

(1) That the yield of turnips has decreased from ten tons to one-half ton per acre since 1848.

(2) That the yield of barley has decreased from forty-six bushels to fourteen bushels since 1849.

(3) That the yield of clover has decreased from two and eight-tenth tons to one-half ton since 1850.