The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-09-17
WHY is Your Land Poor

One of our readers wrote recently
that he has been farming ten years
and finds that the only way he can
get clover on his land is through a
coat of manure as his land is too
poor to start clover without the ma
nure. We get similar letters almost
daily in which the writer's say that
their land is poor. And they have
been working that land for many
years. Are not the farmers then re-
spOnsible for the land being poor Was
it not better when they began? If il
was then their system of cultivation
is faulty and the land has gotten poor
er because of poor farming. The man
who is farming, and has for years
been farming on land that was fer
tile and of good mechanical make
up, should be ashamed to admit that
the land is still poor or has grown
poor under his management There
are deep sands in all sections that can
not be made permanently fertile, since
the plant food teaches from them. But
a good loam soil with a strong clay
below it will only have gotten into
an unproductive condition by bad
farming, and the man who has been
cultivating it is the one who is re-
sponsible for its poverty. 1t is one
of the mysteries in agriculture that
men will go on treating q piece of land
in the same way that has brought it
into an unproductive state, and will
apologize for their poor crops by say
ing that their land is poor, which is
equivalent to saying that they have
been robbing it for years and have
made no effort to restore its original
fertility. 1t is generally the men who
know it an and who do not think
iC tn CtI1 no in
profession, who are responsible for
most of this waste of fertility, but
there are, unfortunately, too many
who do read the farm papers who still
imagine that poor land is a necessity
for them, and they make little use of
the information they may receive from
their reading. 1t is not so much what
q man reads as what he adapts to
his conditions and puts into practice
in his work that makes him a better
farmer. In many sections where fair
ly good farming has been the rule,
and farmers are, as a class, prosper
Gus, they have still gotten into ruts.
and fail to realize that farming is
progressive art and that the man who
fails to keep up with the procession
is really retrOgrading. There is such
q thing as being too we'll satisfied with
the methods in use that in past years
have been a success, and neglecting
to study the advances that are being
made even in the best farmed sections.
l mention a certain Maryland county
as having been well farmed for many
years, and a correspondent writes
that on visit there he found the
farmers using the old method of plOW-
ing their land for wheat after corn
and failing to understand that the
cultivation of the corn was the best
possible preparation for the wheat
and that only the surface needs filming
for a seed bed This only shows that
there are obsolete practices in all sec
tons, while a young man, who is prac-
ticing modern methods in the beauti-
full Juniata Vallor ie laughed at by
the old farmers for his extra pains
with his corn crop, only shows that
even farmers in the best districts OF
Pennsylvania are still following old
rutS