The Florida agriculturist., 1907-12-04

MADE IN our title. LII lI1lS county we
are very much behind the older ma
t1OnS, Tor they are farming lana Which
has been in cultivation tor hundreds OF
years, and still yields good crops. lh1s
problem must be solved before we can
hope to take the position which right
fully should be ours. lhe ed1tOr OF
WaIlaces Farmer tells OF the cOndl-
tlonS in the West, but does not suggest
any remedy, he says:
The biggest problem OF the Amer1-
can farmer is not how to grow grain
or grass, or how to breed and iced
cattle, hogs, or horses, Or even how
to make one hundred dollar land pay,
but how to maintain and increase the
fertility Of his farm. We are rapidly
eXhauStlng our forests. We are ex-
haust1ng, though more slowly, Our sup
ply OF coal both anthracite and bltumi-
nous. Great as they are, these are
small matters as compared with the
exhaustion Of the fertility Of our soils.
1he 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
IDLY as he is doing it now. He cannot
dred years, or even Of the last one
hundred, with any degree Of satisfac-
ton. In the nineteenth century he has
sylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and
pralr1es Of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri,
Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North
ana South Dakota, Kansas, and Ne
braSka.
SOIL exhaustion has kept about fifty
years in his wake and is keeping right
on. The cry for commercial fertilizers
from the middle states such as New
southern Indiana and Illinois, central
come from Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska,
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 a 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 enable
them to avoid the errors into which
their fathers and grandfathers have
fallen.
Many soils in the central west, espe-
cia11y in central Indiana, in Illinois, and
Iowa, have been so exceedingly fer
tile that the farmers are firmly con-
vinced that they are inexhaustible,
and that they can continue for the
next twenty years as they have in the
past to sell them plecemeal.
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 a bushel, 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 get
ting One-thlrd rent on thirty bushels
Of corn per acre, which, even at fifty
cents bushel-a price which we can
not reasonably expect-would only pay
five per cent on the one hundred dol
lar 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.
IL.