Vernon Parish Democrat. (Leesville, La.) 1917-193?, 1921-10-20


! The cultivated lands of China have
been cultivated for over 5000 years
and yet they are fertile. Land in Cal
ifornia deemed of little value, has been
taken by Cinnamon and Japs and made
fertile; and the white truck farmers
! have been run off because their sys-
tenn and methods cannot compete.
How do they do it? Briefly, they don't
rob the soil. Belgium and northern
France. which have visited, have
been cultivated for over 1000 years
and are still fertile. How do they do
it2 They know how to make, save,
and compost their manures with leaves
and sods and almost any form of or
ganic matter and produce humus and
add it to the soils. When France offer
ed prize for the largest yield of good
potatoes, the winner raised 1000 bu.
to the acre, and in Centre Co., Penn,
over 900 blu. to the acre was raised by
the man who won a U. S. prize.
Within the last SIX years. | have
seen Indiana farmers burn the, corn
stalks on their land and also the leaves
that the wind had blown out of the
woods. have seen the same thing in
the South, and in the West - hum,
;,dreds of tons of straw. Some South
ern farmers | have seen do not know
how TO make manure or how to use it.
Some soils deficient in lime are sour;
and to ploy crop under, unless it be
cowpeas, clover, beggar weed, ETC.,
makes the soil sourer for time; but
if lime is present and the soil alkali,
there is positively no danger in blowing
under all the green crops or organic
matter possible Twelve inches deep
of an acre of soil weighs an average of
| 1000 tons; one-hundred tons of or
ganic matter plowed under once in 4
or 5 years would only make one TWEEN
tieth of 1000 tons, and three to ten
tons is all that can be plowed under at
a time, or five-hundredths Of one per
cent, even it ten tons are plowed under
To say that that is dangerous, espec-
tally when divided by four, on once
in four years, is too absurd to be SER
iously considered. Those who say it
are animated monographs. American
agriculture has stripped the flesh from
the soil and it's like Barnum's living
skeleton; and commercial fertilizer,
!, with no humus added, is making the
land poorer.
Commercial fertilizer is like a whip
to horse; yes, it produces immediate
results. but good corn, silage and hay
is far better than the whip. How ma
ny farmers are they who pay their hard
cash for commercial fertilizer and
, burn their corn stalks. dry weeds, and
trash, and then wonder why their land
runs DOWN. They will follow corn
with wheat, again with wheat or some
small grain, and perhaps SOW clover
! with the wheat. If it makes a good
stand, they will remove the first crop
and also the seed crop, and again put
in corn; and this is ROTATION and
said to be good farming, but results
don't confirm the theory. The organ
ic matter is not being supplied and ma
tural results follow. OF course, if the
organic matter can be composted with
manure and rotted, it is like cooking
the food and making it more digesti-
bic.
w. S. Smith, an Indiana farmer, who
has been extremely successful, writes
as follows: Standing in the receding
twilight of an April evening, | have
seen the entire visible horizon of the
famous Wabash Valley aglow with the
reflection from the burning corn stalks
from thousands of acres that needed
the humus and nitrogen of these
stalks, but was going up in smoke and
gas to be lost forever to these lands
that are so fast being depleted of their
fertility" This is crime, and if the
government knew its duty, it would
stop it, even by prison sentence if me-
cessary.
!, Again Smith.wr 'One day in the
spring of 1919. noticed great cloud
of smoke covering large area. The
conflagration was too large for corn
stalks or buildings. Later | learned
that farmer (excuse my calling him
farmer) had touched a matched to
40 acres of dry Big English clover left
uncut from the previous season. Think
what it would have meant to that soil
and that man had that crop of organic
matter. or nitrogen and humus, been
plowed underl And | said, THE
match in the hands of the so-called
American farmer is a menace to our
agriculture. It has been estimated