Dakota farmers' leader. (Canton, S.D.) 1890-19??, 1907-11-22
The Biggest Problem on the
American Farm.

The Biggest Problem on the
American Farm.
Wallaces' Farmer: The biggest
problem of the American farmer Is
not how to grow grain or grass, or
how to breed and feed cattle, hogs, or
horses, or even how to make one
hundred dollar land pay, but how to
and increase the fertility OF
his farm. We are rapidly exhausting
our forests. We are eXhausting,
though more slowly, our supply OF
coal both anthracite and bituminous.
Great as they are, these are small
matters as compared with the ex-
haustion Of the fertility of our soils.
The American farmer from the be-
ginning has been soil robber, and at
no time in the history of the country
has he exhausted the soils, nor has it
been possible to exhaust them, as rap
idly as he is doing now. He cannot
look back upon the record of two hum
dred years, or even OF the last one
hundred, with any degree Of satisfac-
tion. In the nineteenth century he
has cut down the forests of western
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio
and Indiana. He has broken up the
prairies of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri,
Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North
and South Dakota, Kansas and Neb-
raSka.
Soil exhaustion has kept about fifty
years in his wake and is keeping right
on. The cry for commercial fertilizers
gees up from the New England states,
from the middle states such as New
York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, from
southern Indiana and Illinois, central
Missouri, and in a few years it will
come from Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska
and almost the entire south. This cry
for commercial fertilizers measures
the exhaustion of soil fertility. One
hundred years more of the methods
that have been practiced for the last
century will SO greatly exhaust soil
fertility that farming in the west will
be what it is in many parts of the
east, a profession to be avoided by the
young and ambitious and enterprising
and left to those who are content to
live life of drudgery. This is put
ting it bluntly and strongly but plain
ly, BECAUSE we want to wake up the
farmers of this middle west and en-
able them to avoid the errors into
which, their fathers and grandfathers
have fallen.
Many soils in the central west, es-
pecially in central Indiana, in Illinois,
and Iowa, have been so exceedingly
fertile that the farmers are firmly
convinced that they are inexhaust-
ible, and that they can continue for
the next twenty years as they have in
the past to sell them piecemeal
For the last five or six years soil
robbery has been exceedingly profit
able on these lands. Landlords have
been able to rent for half, on the best
lands getting fifty bushels Of corn per
acre, worth fifty cents busfei, or ten
dollars an acre rent, which will pay
bank interest on two hundred and
fifty dollar land. 1t will not be many
years, however, before they get TO the
end OF their tether, and they will be
getting one-third rent on thirty BUSH
els of corn per acre, which, even at
fifty cents bushel-a price which
we cannot reasonably expect would
only pay five per cent ON the one
hundred dollar land, less taxes.
One Of the first signs of decreasing
soil fertility is the inability to grow
clover, Every year more and more
complaints come to us from farmers
that they cannot get stand of clover.
We know exactly what that means.
Where germinable seed has been
sowed properly it cannot help but
grow; but if the soil has reached a
certain degree Of depletion it will not
continue to grow, and perennial weeds
such as morning-glory, bind weed,
quack grass, and Canada thistle will
take it's place. No soils except those
of Egypt, or other countries where
the irrigation water brings with it a
top dressing Of fertility, can maintain
their fertility under the methods of
farming practiced by the grain grower
Of Illinois or Iowa.
We have two classes of soil robbers;
The comparatively poor man who forty
years ago obtained an eighty or quar-
ter Of the best land in Illinois, or
Iowa, skinned the cream off of it, +"
to use his own expression, and went
farther west for other fields to rob.
He has been succeeded by the rich soil
robber, who has been able to buy a
half section or section. move to town,
rent on shares, sell his grain off the
land, and live on the profits. 1t will
take the latter longer to get to the
end of his tether, but the end is no
less certain.
WhsJ the farmers of the west, both
lapSlords and tenants and men who
coerate their own farms, must do is
TO take up this question of the mainte-
nance of soil fertility from the very
bottom and fix upon methods of farm
ipp that, will rOf, only maintain fe r.