Mexico Missouri message. (Mexico, Audrain County, Mo.) 1899-1918, 1916-06-29
ROBBING The SOIL
The Tomorrow of Vandalia and Au-
drain County-H. j. Waters Gives
Some Most Interesting Views.


Mr.. Waters referred to is a former
Audrain county boy. He was at one
time connected with Missouri Uni
versity and is now at the head of the
Agricultural department in Kansas
University:
The thing. of greater value than
all else to Vandalia is the fertile
farming land which surrounds the
city. 1t is an old and true saying
that we can't eat our cake and keep
it too. 1t is equally true that we
can't waste our land and keep it
fertile. Indeed, it is very difficult
to use land profitably and still keep
it fertile. 1t is vastly more difficult
to repair worn-out land and make
living from it at the same time.
If we do not keep the soil fertile
enough to produce a living for the
farm family, and reasonable profit
to the farmer, agriculture will de-
cline and it will drag down with it
all other industries.
So far we have not handled our
soil in way to keep it as fertile as
it was when we broke it out of the
prairie less than a generation ago.
1t is safe to estimate that at least a
third of the plant food in the origi-
nal pillow soil is gone. 1t took nature
millions of years to put this food into
the soil The modern farmer with his
horse machinery and his robber crops
like corn, has taken third of this
food out of the soil within the span
of half a generation. 1t is the first
third of the plantfood in the soil
that made the soil profitable to farm.
In taking the second third out,
the land owner will be forced to
accept smaller yields and steadily
lowering rates. The farmer and
his family would starve while trying
to use the last third. We need
to consider therefore how our
systems of farming are affecting the
fertility of our soil. In estimating
the cost of pillow or a suit of clothes
the first item the manufacturer sets
down is the cost of the raw material
used. We know that it takes TWEEN
ty-four cents worth of raw material
from the soil to make a bushel of
corn, but we never think of includ-
ing this item when estimating the
cost of producing corn. We forget
to add $500 a ton to the cost of pro-
ducing timothy hay for the fertility
it has taken out of the soil.
We feel that somehow the fertil-
ity in our soil will last always even
with our present wasteful ways of
farming. 1t makes a great deal of
difference in soil fertility account
whether we sell our crops in the raw
state as corn, oats, and timothy, or
in a finished state as butter, hogs,
horses, cattle and poultry.
In an earlier number of the Adver-
tiser was a news item about the
shipment of a train load of Missouri
butter to Europe. A part of this
butter was produced i'll Audrain,
Rails, and Pike counties. Missouri
received let us assume, 100000 for
this shipment of butter The raw
material or, soil fertility THIS butter
carried out of the State was worth
only $3.50 IT, instead of selling but
ter, the Missouri farmers had sold
the feed required to make this but
ter such as corn, bran, silage and
timothy, the State would be $751;
$50 poorer, because this is the value
of the plant food these feeds would
have carried of the State, as the
land and the manure containing
most of this plant food was return
ed to the soil. Selling butter, there.
fore, does not wear the land out ii
the manure is saved properly, Sell.
ing fat hogs, fat cattle, or sheep, al,
so saves the land.
Selling grain and hay wastes the
land, and it finally brings ruin to all
who live in land which follows thai