The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-12-27
What Our Worn Soil Needs Above
Everything.


We fear no contradiction in the state
nent that the distressing condition of
southern farming now is chiefly owing to
the fact that the majority of our farmers
are cultivating soils so nearly impoverish-
ed as to preclude the hope of making their
farming profitable, except perhaps, in oc-
casional years when the seasons happen
to be propitious.
This poverty of the soil is owing al
most invariably to the absence of humus.
Long, continued cultivation in crops that
required clean culture without a national
proportion of grass land and stock has
brought the bulk of the cotton lands of the
south to condition so quilted and impov-
erished of humus thar it is impossible for
them to compete with the newly opened
rich soils of the west and northwest.
Year after year we see one person or an
other planting land that has not made a
profitable crop in years. One fails at it, an
other steps in and tries his hand and so it
goes on one year to another. We see even
the same farmer cultivating the same piece
of land year after wear, first in cotton, then
in corn or oats or peas, or something else
and never getting any profitable returns
from it. He seems to be led on by some
hope, very unreasonable one, that he will
for all previous failures.
Unless our farmers proceed at once to
restore this essential matter of humuS to
their Soils and accept as true the princi-
pie long ago laid down, that a successful
agriculturer cannot be established and
sustained without a proper regard to grass
land and stock. IL will not be very many
years more before we are in a condi-
ton as bad or worse than Ireland is
to-day. We will want to emigrate then,
some of us, but be too poor to carry out
the desire.
Vegetable mould or humus IS simply
woody fiber or organic matter in a state
of decay, 1t matters not what so it is the
product of growth. No valuable plants be-
gan to grow on the earth until the soil
had been furnished with vegetable mould
by the decay of inferior plants. Woody
fiber consists of carbon COAL, nitrogen, hy-
drogen and oxygen, the latter two being
the elements of water. Valuable as humus
is to render soils fertile, yet as humus ii
does not enter directly into plants. In its
decomposition it becomes a storehouse for
carbonic acid, the form in which plants de-
rive their carbon. Humus is also the me-
dunn through which plants receive a great
part of their ammonia (hydrogen.)
Humus acts, says Liebig, in the same
manner in a soil permeable to air as in air
itself it is a continued source of carbonic
acid which it limits very slowly.
An atmosphere of carbonic acid formed
at the expense of the air surrounds every
particle of decaying humus The cultiva-
ton OF land by loosening the soil causes a
free and unobstructive access of air.
An atmosphere of carbonc acid is there
fore contained in every fertile SOIL and is
the first and most important food for the
young plants which grow in it. Unless the
carbonic acid and ammonia are in the soil
In proper quantity profitable crops need
not be expected, the little of these derived
from the atmosphere, if any, such is util-
lied goes very little way toward making a
profitable crop.
We may supply commercial fertilizers,
especially the minerals, without end to
soils destitute of humus and yet produce no
profitable crop. Stable manure is the only
humus furnishing fertilizer available to
farmers. Experience in this country as well
as in older countries, prove that humus
can be profitably restored to land only by
growing il on the land