The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1909-06-23

same thing can be seen in Southern
Illinois, where there are large dis
tricts which produce scant crops and
where farms can be bought at one
third-even a fourth Of the price of
| good farm lands in the middle and
northern parts of the State. Ordi-
nariily these Southern Illinois farms
were nearly, if not fully, as produc-
| tive as any in the State. They have
been under the give-nothing-and-
take everything system of cultiva-
ton, and the result is that the land
has been put out of business because
of mistreatment. And so you will
| find it in every State where the land
has been worked on this plan for any
considerable number of years.
Bue we are not left to size up in a
| general way the results of this sui
| cidal method of land cultivation; the
| scientists who are working in the
field of agriculture have produced
some very exact information which
tells the story in a pointed and a pre-
| else way. A careful reading of these
| authorities points to the fact that the
| grain crops are reducing the produc-
tiyeness of the soil, under present
methods of cultivation, at the rate of
two per cent. a year. Few men IN
| America have gone into the subject
more deply than Professor Hopkins,
of the University of Illinois, and he
does not hesitate to declare his con-
viction that, if we keep on farming
as we are now doing 1t in Illinois, the
| State will be an unproductive desert
within a century. He has not come
to this conclusion by guess work, but
by a most careful system of actual
experiments.
On one piece of ground under his
charge corn has been raised for twen-
ty-eight consecutive years raised
according to methods common
throughout the State. The produc-
tiveness of that piece has steadily de-
| clined, and it is certain that, in a
very few years, it will not have
| enough power left to produce either
corn or clover. Our grain farmers
seem to feel that crop rotation con-
sists in alternating corn and oats on
their land. How does it work out?
| Professor Hopkins has put this to the
test. The land on which he has tried
this system was as good, originally,
as any in Illinois, and yet it produces
only three bushels of corn and three
bushels of oats to the acre. Now how
does the other side of this scientific
work show? Practically alongside
the strips of land on which these eX-
periments have been conducted are
strips not a whit better or richer,
naturally. They have been handled
on a different system of cultivation.
The plots which have been subjected
to true crop rotation - clover, corn
and oats-and have been intelligent
ly fortified have produced ninety
bushels to the acre. AS showing what
real r rotation will do without the
use of fertilizer I cite the fact that
he gets sixty bushels to the acre on
land planted to successive crops of
| clover and oats. My own experience
is that I can raise seventy-fve bush
els of corn to the acre on land sub
jected to right crop rotation and
right fertilization as against thirty
bushels per acre raised by my imme-
date neighbors working by the old
methods on land naturally as good
as my own. That I have done right
along and on a large scale, too. What
Is more, my land under proper treat
ment is growing better year by year,
while theirs is steadily going down
in productiveness-and consequently
in price. If they stick to their meth
DDS their land will, in a few years,
reach a grade of unproductiveness at
which it will not pay for cultivation.
AS nearly as I can arrive at 1t,
| about seventy per cent. of the farm
land in Illinois, for example, have
been cultivated for thirty years under
a crop rotation" consisting OF alter
mating corn and wheat, with moth
ing save the stubble put back into
the soil. This is one important rea-
son why Eastern States-Maine, New
| HAMPSHIRE, Connecticut and others
get a very much higher average
yield of corn to the acre than the
great corn States of the Middle West.
In the East they practice crop rota-
! ton and intelligent fertilization.
Before leaving this question OF
how our soil is depleted, let ne en-
phasize the fact that United States
the greatest of all agricultural coun-
tries-is admitted by soil scientists to
stand first in the list in the rapidity
of it's soil exhaustion, and that we are
rapidly adding to u area of aban-
doned agricultural lands.
And it may be we'll to add to what
I have said of the experiments under
Professor Hopkins a suggestion OF
what has been done in the same line
of demonstration in England, where
they have mad more time in which to
try out things. At the famous Roth
emstead station they have grown
wheat on the same piece of ground
for fifty years-with the result that
1.-The phosphorus actually removed
from one of the best yielding plots
in five years is equivalent to forty
per cent. of the total phosphorus or
iginally contained in the soil to a
depth of seven inches
A PARDON