Norwich bulletin., 1921-11-25
Written Specially for The Bulletin)

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 The first function of farming is to make crops grow. This isn't it's only function, of course, but the first in order.
 To make crops grow we farmers must see that they have in the soil sufficient plant-food of the required sorts and in the required proportions to induce growth. It is just exactly as essential to feed our potatoes as to feed our pigs. In either case we must put the crop either where it can forage successfully for itself or where we have provided the necessary forage.
 To fat porker In this part of the country we have to supply him with corn meal and "slops" ana some sort of green fodder That Is because he can't find those requisites for himself.
 To grow f1rst-class, Alone. bang-up crops We have to supply the soil with nitrogen and potash and phosphorous and calcium (lime) This is because the dirt We have to work with has been robbed of those substances by our predecessors. Originally the soil of the United States had enough of all these needed elements. The settlers called the virgin soil they found extremely fertile. The prairie pi- oneers of the west found the great alluv- ial bottoms on which they settled also l naturally fertile. All they had to do was to tickle the earth with hoe and It would taught out with a generous | harvest. And so they proceeded to mine these naturally rich soils rather than 1 manage them; to exploit them rather than conserve them; to waste them rather than 1 develop them.
 The inevitable result has followed ii l ta f1o11 1 'wern-eut'' farms. They are not quite called starved out" farms-starved out by our own and our forefathers' short i sighted folly or perhaps more pardonable | ignorance.
 Well, the times of that ignorance were formerly winked at But the winkins stage has now definitely and wholly pass ed. We have got to repent; not only tt repent, but to bring forth works meet fol repentance Moreover, we've got to do i in comparatively short order or find our selves in the discard.
 Consider nitrogen for instance. Tn, best attainable estimates are that whel this country was first seen by white men its top soil within reach of a blow con tained 550,0e0.000 tons of nitrogen il shape available for plants to live on while now it harbors only about 275,00t tons In other words, half the suppl. which a good God had employed his bac ,l teria for ten thousand years in accumu 1 lating in the soil has gone-gone part 1 ly through a teaching process but partly also through our ignorance in substitut ing soil wastage for soil conservation i in becoming reckless miners rather thar provident farmers.
 Furthermore, this nitrogen wastage fl steadily going on right now at the rats of some 5000, ,000 tons year Not only that, but the scanty remainder is becom ing less and less available for plant by reason of increasing instability. Al | Dr. Bailey put it's: We are thieVing tn nitrogen out of the soil" We are burg larizing the bank which. at the same tim we are depending on to pay us our semi annual dividends.
 Says Prof. Esten: 'The problem be fore us is to restore to the soil each Yea
 some S,000,009 tons of nitrogen" How ar we going to do it? By importing nitrat
 of soda from ChHi? Why, man alive, al
 the nitraNe of soda in sight in all tn
 world isn't enough to supply the nitro
 gen wastage in the crops of the Unite
 States alone for half-a-doZen years A
 Prof. Esten graphically remarks, it, ism
 enough even to make dent in the prot
 lem.
 shalT we get 1t out of the atmospher
 by using electricity, generated in in
 mense plants by incalculable horse-poH
 CT to tear the structure of the air apal
 and separate the nitrogen. Why all th ceal and all the water-power of tt
 United States, if used solely for ths : one purpose, wouldn't supply nitroge
 for one years crops. It is stated al thoritatively that "a million dollar ele
 tric plant running a whole year woul ' only fix enough nitrogen from the air ]
 supply the growing corn crop of u
 United States for 400 minutes'-less tha seven hours
 . Moreover, what farmer could afford
 raise dollar wheat or ffteen~cent col
 or any other crop by the use of nitroge extorted at such extravagant cost? I \ might as we'll use ground up diamond q l for nlanurel
 There was nitrogen enough in the SC s when he began to draw on it, first. E E cry smallest atom of that imperative < needed plant-food had been fixed In tn; virgin soil by the action of bacteria Fl H bacteria are no modern invention The are as old as the dirt itself; have bee in it and of 1t ever since it existe E America was waiting to be discovered a long time before Columbus was bor Soil bacteria were ceaselessly and mu titudinously at work all over the earth surface thousands of years before al human being first glimpsed them. They have been from the days of t far distant Great Beginning working and through the soil, filling 1t with u plant-food on which crops grow. WI not keep them on this job?
 Do we know more about poker than Il