PERMANENT SOIL FERTILITY
Its Relation to Profits and Future Values
THOUGH intelligent soil improvement is the most profitable business
in which an honest man can engage, ordinary farming is not a highly
remunerative occupation, and to a large extent the fortune of the
farmer is bound up with the increase or depreciation in the market
value of his land. There are at least three important factors of
influence which induce people to continue farming:
First, the farmer is his own employer. He controls his own job, is
his own boss and has no superior officer to lay him off because of
disagreement, dull business or political preferment. Farmers
constitute by far the largest class of citizens who own their own
business, and are thus "independent."
Second, the farmer is able as a rule to make some sort of a living
for his family very largely out of the produce of the farm, so that
he gets some return for his labor in terms of food, even when there
is no profit in farming as a business; whereas the wage-earner of
the city, as soon as his wages stop and his savings and credit are
exhausted, must see his family supported by charity or starve. This
is not fiction, but fact.
Third, land is usually considered a safe investment, in which one
may hold a perfect and undivided title to his property; and people
will retain possession of a farm even when it pays a low rate of
interest, rather than sell and invest the proceeds in some other
enterprise which they cannot control as individuals or which may
suddenly depreciate in earning power, fail or be utterly destroyed.
Is Land a Safe Investment?
Though it is true that farm land does not pass out of existence in a
day, nevertheless it is by no means a safe investment, as witness
the numerous abandoned farms in the older agricultural sections of
this new country. It is easily possible for one of means to become
land-poor--to have investments in land which will not pay the taxes
and upkeep of buildings, fences and so forth. At prevailing prices
for farm produce and labor there are vast areas of land in the older
states far past the point of possible self-redemption; and, as a
matter of business, one might better burn his money and save his
energy than to expend all his resources in half-paying for such
depleted land, depending upon the immediate income from it to raise
a mortgage covering the unpaid balance.
Intelligent optimism is admirable, but fact is better than fiction;
and blind bigotry paraded as optimism is dangerous and condemnable.
Some one has said that such a bigot is not an optimist but a
"cheerful idiot." To purchase rich, well-watered land at a low price
and become wealthy by merely waiting till the land increases in
value tenfold, while making a living by taking fertility from the
soil, has been easy and common in the great agricultural states
during the last half-century. But, paradoxical as it may seem, land
values have increased while fertility and productiveness have
decreased and, with shorter days for higher priced and less
efficient farm labor, with more middlemen absorbing the profits
between the producer and the consumer, it is now difficult indeed to
buy land with borrowed money and pay for it from subsequent farm
profits. If continued soil depletion is practiced, ultimate failure
is the only future for such investments.
That vast areas of land once cultivated with profit in the original
thirteen states now lie agriculturally abandoned is common
knowledge; and that the farm lands of the great Corn Belt and Wheat
Belt of the North-Central states are even now undergoing the most
rapid soil depletion ever witnessed is known to all who possess the
facts. Unless this tendency is checked these lands will go the way
of the abandoned farms.
Some Broad Facts
The United States Bureau of the Census reports that the total
production of our five great grain crops--corn, wheat, oats, barley
and rye--amounted to 4,414,000,000 bushels in 1899, and to
4,445,000,000 bushels in 1909, an increase of less than one per
cent. Furthermore, if we assume the average production reported by
the United States Department of Agriculture for the three-year
periods 1898 to 1900 and 1908 to 1910 as the normal for 1899, and
1909, respectively, and compare these averages with the production
actually reported by that department for 1899 and 1909, we find that
as an average of all these crops 1909 was a slightly more favorable
season than 1899, which indicates that with strictly comparable
seasons the increase from 1899 to 1909 was less than 1/2 per cent in
the production of these five great grain crops of the United States.
On the other hand, the Bureau of Census reports that during the same
decade the acreage of farm land in the United States increased by
4.8 per cent, and that the acreage of improved farm land-that is,
farmed land-increased by 154 per cent. Thus the census data plainly
show reduced yield per acre. In addition we have actual records
which show that during the decade our wheat exports decreased from
210,000,000 to 108,000,000 bushels, and that our corn exports
decreased from 196,000,000 to 49,000,000 bushels, in order to help
feed the increase of 21 per cent in our population. And yet the
people complained of the high cost of plain living and many have
been forced to adopt lower standards for the table. Meanwhile the
value of the farm land in the United States increased by 118 per cent
during the ten years--from $13,000,000,000 to $28,500,000,000--as
reported by the Bureau of Census.
The Value of Land
The great primary reason why land values have increased so markedly
during the last thirty years is that America has no more free land
of good quality in humid sections. Civilized man is characterized by
hunger for the ownership of land. Our population continues to
increase by more than 20 per cent each decade, but all future
possible additions to the farm lands of the United States amount to
only 9 per cent of the present acreage, and most of this small
addition requires expensive irrigation or drainage.
If it cost $4 an acre to raise corn, 5 cents a bushel to harvest and
market the crop, 9 cents a bushel to maintain the fertility of the
soil, and 1/2 per cent on the value of the land for taxes, then, if
money is worth 5 per cent, land that produces 20 bushels of 40-cent
corn is worth $21.81 an acre. On the same basis, what would land be
worth that produces 40 bushels of corn and equivalent values of
other crops? At first thought one might say, $43.62; but this answer
would be far from the correct one, which is $116.36.
And, if we again double the yield, making it 80 bushels an acre, the
value of the land becomes not $87.24, and not $232.72; but easy
computation will show that the gross receipts from an 80-bushel crop
will pay $7.20 an acre for soil enrichment, $4 for raising the crop,
$4 for harvesting and marketing, $1.53 for taxes and 5 per cent
interest on a valuation of $305.45 an acre.
The average yield of corn in the United States is only 25 bushels an
acre, and the average net returns even from the farms of the Corn
Belt will not pay 4 per cent interest on their present market value.
But the intelligent investment of $2 an acre annually in positive
soil enrichment will increase the crop yield by two bushels of corn
each year--or by equivalent amounts of other crops grown in the
rotation--and will maintain this increase for at least a dozen years
on the average land now under cultivation in the United States; and
no other safe investment can be named that will pay so great
returns. Of course, the cost is $1 a bushel for the first year's
increase, and even the second year the 4 bushels of corn cost $2;
but what is the cost per bushel of the increase the tenth year? It
is 10 cents; and the twelfth year the 24 bushels of increase cost
only 8-1/3 cents a bushel, with a return of nearly 500 per cent on
the annual investment in soil improvement.
And this is not based on mere theoretical considerations. The
average Corn-Belt land is producing only 40 bushels of corn to the
acre; while a six-year average yield of 90 bushels has been produced
on the common Corn-Belt land with proper and profitable soil
treatment. Thus is it too much for any farmer to adopt a definite
system based upon established practical scientific information which
makes it possible for his yield to increase from 40 bushels to an
average of 64 bushels an acre? But let him make sure that the system
he adopts is cumulative and truly permanent, and not merely
stimulating and temporary.
What Phosphorus Did on One Farm
On his 500-acre farm near Gilman, in the heart of the Illinois Corn
Belt, Mr. Frank I. Mann has produced a 70-bushel average yield of
corn for a five-year period, and with 200 acres of land in corn
annually. It cost him only $1 an acre a year in fine-ground natural
rock phosphate to produce increased yields of 16 bushels more corn,
23 bushels more oats and 1 ton more clover than the average yields
secured without adding phosphorus.
But this progressive, practical farmer is only putting into
profitable practice the results of the long-continued careful
investigations with raw phosphate conducted by such public-service
institutions as the agricultural experiment stations of
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Ohio and
Illinois. He knows also that on four different fields of typical
Corn-Belt land in McLean county, Illinois, the total crop values per
acre for a period of ten years were $148.75 $151-30, $149.43 and
$149.96, respectively, and that on four other adjoining or
intervening fields, which differed only by two liberal additions of
phosphorus during the ten years, the respective crop values for the
same time were $229,37, $221.30, $229.20 and $225.57.
Of course, Mr. Mann does not buy nitrogen, but he takes it from the
inexhaustible supply in the air by means of clover and alfalfa or
other legumes. He does not buy potassium because he knows how to
liberate it from the inexhaustible supply contained in the soil, and
because he knows that in the Illinois investigation just cited the
crop values from four different fields not receiving potassium were
$148.75, $151.30, $229.37 and $221.30; while four other adjoining
fields, which differed only by liberal applications of potassium,
produced during the same ten years $149.43, $149.96, $229.20 and
$225.57, respectively.
Thus, as a general average, phosphorus increased the crop values by
$76.50 an acre, which amounts to more than 300 per cent on the
investment, and at the end of the ten years the soil on the best
treated and highest yielding land was 10 per cent richer in
phosphorus than at the beginning; while the crops from the
unfertilized land removed an amount of phosphorus equal to nearly
one-tenth of the total supply in the plowed soil. But a similar
general average shows that potassium produced increased crop values
worth only 86 cents, or 3 per cent of its cost.
What other results should be expected from land containing in the
plowed soil of an acre less than 1200 pounds of phosphorus and more
than 36,000 pounds of potassium?
"Working" the Land
If there is one agricultural fact that needs to be impressed upon
the American people it is that the farmers of this country have been
living, not upon the interest from their investments, but upon their
principal; and whatever measure of apparent prosperity they have had
has been taken from their capital stock. The boastful statement
sometimes made, that the American landowner has become a scientific
farmer, is as erroneous as it is optimistic. Such statements are
based upon a few selected examples or rare illustrations, and not
upon any adequate knowledge of general farm practice. Even to this
date almost every effort put forth by the mass of American farmers
has resulted in decreasing the fertility of the soil.
The productive power of normal land in humid climates depends almost
wholly upon the power of the soil to feed the crop; but the American
farmer does everything except to restore to the soil the plant food
required to maintain permanently its crop-producing power. These
ought be to have done, but not to leave the other undone. Thus, tile
drainage adds nothing to the soil out of which crops are made, but
only permits the removal of more fertility in the larger crops
produced on the well-drained land. More thorough tillage with our
improved implements of cultivation is merely "working the land for
all that's in it." The use of better seed produces larger crops, but
only at the expense of the soil. Even the farm manure is so limited
and is spread so thinly with manure-spreaders made for the purpose
that it adds but little to the soil in comparison with the crops
removed and sold in grain and hay as well as in meat and milk.
Clover, as commonly produced and harvested, adds little or no
nitrogen to the soil.
The ordinary high-priced, manufactured, acidulated, so-called
"complete" commercial fertilizers, in the small amounts that farmers
can afford to use, and do use quite generally in the older states,
serve in part as soil-stimulants and commonly leave the land poorer
year by year; and if the farmers of the great Corn and Wheat Belts
are ever to adopt systems of permanent agriculture, it must be done
in the near future, or they too will awake to find their lands
impoverished beyond self-redemption.
Even in the state of Massachusetts, where a most active campaign has
been waged for forty years by the mixed commercial fertilizer
interests, urging and persuading many farmers to use their
high-priced artificial soil stimulants, very large areas of land are
being agriculturally abandoned. Thus the following statement appears
in the report of the United States Bureau of Census in regard to the
farm land of Massachusetts:
"The area of improved land decreased without interruption until in
1910 it was only about one-half what it was in 1880."
It should not be forgotten, however, that market gardeners often
sell from $100 to $300 worth of produce from an acre and they can
well afford to use large amounts of soluble commercial plant food
(acid phosphate, nitrates, etc.) as well as animal manures from the
cities.
Is the Soil Inexhaustible?
It is not the fault of the farmer alone that soil-robbing and land
ruin have followed his work in America. Neither the average farmer
of today nor any of his ancestors received any agricultural
instruction in the schools; and the greedy fertilizer agent has
persuaded him to buy his patent soil medicine and has taken $100 of
the farmer's money and given him in return only $10 worth of what he
really needs to buy; and even the Bureau of Soils of the Federal
Government has for several years promulgated the erroneous and
condemnable theory expressed in the following quotations:
"From the modern conception of the nature and purpose of the soil it
is evident that it cannot wear out; that, so far as the mineral food
is concerned, it will continue automatically to supply adequate
quantities of the mineral plant foods for crops." (United States
Bureau of Soils, Bulletin No. 55, p. 79.)
"There is another way in which the fertility of the soil can be
maintained: namely, by arranging a system of rotation and growing
each year a crop that is not injured by the excreta of the preceding
crop: then when the time comes round for the first crop to be
planted again, the soil has had ample time to dispose of the sewage
resulting from the growth of the plant two or three years before."
(United States Farmers' Bulletin No. 257, p. 21.)
"The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation
possesses. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted; that
cannot be used up." (United States Bureau of Soils, Bulletin No. 55,
p. 66.)
And these are only samples of the false teaching spread abroad by
this bureau of theorists, even though the congressmen of the United
States can not enter the capitol of the nation from any direction
without passing depleted and agriculturally abandoned lands. Is it
not in order to ask the Congress or the president of the United
States how long the American farmer is to be burdened with these
pernicious, disproved and condemnable doctrines poured forth and
spread abroad by the Federal Bureau of Soils?
It is true that these erroneous teachings have been opposed or
ridiculed in Europe; they have been denounced by the Association of
Official Agricultural Chemists of the United States, and rejected by
every land-grant college and agricultural experiment station that
has been heard from, including those in forty-seven states; and yet
this doctrine, emanating from what should be the position of highest
authority, is the most potent of all existing influences to prevent
the proper care of our soils.
The Values in Land
It was Baron von Liebig who taught, both in Germany and in England,
that--"it is not the land itself that constitutes the farmer's
wealth, but it is in the constituents of the soil, which serve for
the nutrition of plants, that this wealth truly consists." And it is
in the application of this teaching, completely verified by sixty
years of investigation and demonstration by Lawes and Gilbert at
Rothamsted, that England has been able to raise her 10-year average
yield of wheat to 37-1/2 bushels an acre, while the average for the
United States stands at 14 bushels.
In Illinois, where the agricultural college and experiment station,
the state farmers' institute and the agricultural press have been
working in perfect co-operation in teaching and demonstrating the
need and value of soil enrichment as well as of seed selection and
proper tillage, the 10-year average yield of wheat is already 3
bushels higher and the 10-year average yield of corn is 7-1/2
bushels higher than the averages for the 25-year period ending with
1890, before the definite information from Illinois investigations
began to be widely disseminated; and yet it must be confessed that
on the average Illinois is producing only 16 bushels of wheat and 36
bushels of corn to the acre, which is less than half a crop,
measured by the possibilities of our soil and climate.
But what shall we say of Georgia, both an older and a larger state,
and with far better climatic conditions for corn, yet with a 10-year
average yield of less than 12 bushels of corn to the acre,
notwithstanding the yearly expenditure of $20,000,000 for more than
2000 different brands of commercial fertilizers that have been
bought by Georgia farmers? The facts are that while some profit can
be secured from the use of high-priced mixed commercial fertilizers
for cotton with lint at 10 cents a pound, they scarcely pay their
cost when used for corn, even at Georgia prices.
Working Mind and Muscle
But Georgia spends money enough for fertilizers to double the
average crop yields of the entire state within a decade if wisely
invested in positive soil enrichment in rational permanent systems
of agriculture.
Why should not the farmers of Georgia and other Southern states be
brought to understand and to apply the results of those most
valuable investigations conducted by the Louisiana Experiment
Station on typical worn upland soil of the South, which show that
the use of organic manures produced upon the farm-farm manure,
legume cover-crops and cottonseed meal--re-enforced by liberal
additions of phosphorus, increased the crop yields from 466 to 1514
pounds per acre of seed cotton, from 9.4 to 31.4 bushels of corn,
and from 16.4 to 41.8 bushels of oats, as the averages for nineteen
years?
This experiment occupied 6 acres of land, but when the results are
applied to a 60-acre farm it is found that the gross returns from
the untreated land would amount to $595.76, while the net returns
from the soil treatment amount to $956.08 annually, both the value
of produce and the cost of fertilizer being computed at the prices
that were used by the Louisiana Experiment Station.
Thus the combined _gross_ earning power of both land and labor is
less than $600 a year; while the brain work applied to the
improvement of the soil on the same farm brings a net return of more
than $950. Once in three years 50 pounds an acre of kainit was also
applied. This would contain only 5 pounds of potassium, or less than
would be required for one 7-bushel crop of corn.
These are the oldest experiments in the United States in which
organic manures have been re-enforced with phosphorus, and the only
addition suggested for the profitable improvement of this system is
ground limestone on acid soils. These results only emphasize the
fact that the average farm yields small returns upon the capital and
labor invested, but the statement may well be repeated that the
intelligent improvement of his soil, in systems of permanent
agriculture, is the most profitable business in which the farmer and
land owner can engage.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The following generous statements are quoted here only because of
the hope and earnest desire that those who have read the preceding
pages may continue their study of the soil--the foundation of all
agriculture--until they master the subject, and make their own the
existing knowledge of the fundamental principles of permanent soil
fertility.
"Another Great Sermon"
Have you read it? It is "The Story of the Soil," by Doctor Cyril G.
Hopkins, and not since the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin has any
writer in the world produced a book of such tremendous importance to
present and future generations. This sermon is in harmony with 20th
century ideals. H. A. McKEENE, _Secretary Illinois State Farmers
Institute._
"The Story of the Soil:" from the basis of absolute science and real
life. This is an odd book. It has a love story running through it,
and it has an index, not a usual appendix to a novel. And yet it is
not really a novel, but a scientific book on agriculture. There is
just enough story to entice the less willing reader to absorb some
of the latest results of soil analysis. The young man of the story
visits Virginia and New England, with a view to purchasing a
worn-out farm and building it up. He finally buys such a farm, and
by the methods carefully explained restores it to fertility and
profit. This requires dialogs and letters on scientific husbandry,
even in the love-making, and one who reads and digests it will make
a better farmer.--_The Independent,_ New York.
"The Story of the Soil" has proven an inspiration to many of our
California farmers. We wish for the book a widespread
circulation.--_California Cultivator._
I doubt if a dozen people in the country would believe that it is
possible to write a novel about the soil--these big soil problems
handled so ably, so plainly that any person can understand. Here is
a book that certainly every man in the land should read.--Editor
CHARLES W. BURKETT, _of American Agriculturist and of Ginn &
Company's Country Life Education Series._
I must say that I think the book is destined to do more good, stir
more thought, encourage more upward effort among the farmers of this
country, than any other publication that has yet appeared. It was a
happy thought making a human story of it.--Ex-Gov. W. D. HOARD,
_Editor of Hoard's Dairyman, Fort Atkinson, Wis._
When Dr. Cyril Hopkins sets out to write a book we know we are in
for something unconventional, but this time he has excelled himself
in unconventionality, and has essayed a task that no author has
attempted for the last sixty years,--to tell the story of the soil
in the form of a chronicle. The result is remarkable; a clear
account is given of the soil in relation to the crop, and the
interest of the subject is broadened by skillfully weaving in the
threads of a mild novel. Light reading the book certainly is, as the
author intended, but it has depth and permanent value.--DR. E.J.
Russell, _Director of the Rothamsted Experiment Station,
England,--from "Nature."_
In this book Dr. Hopkins has embodied in the shape of an interesting
story, dealing with life on a farm, the science of soil fertility
and permanent agriculture. He has demonstrated how the most badly
run-down soil can be restored to more than virgin fertility, and
with profit in the doing of the work.--Editor J. F. JACKSON, _of the
Southern Planter, Richmond, Va._
I wish that every farmer and farmer's family in the land could read
"The Story of the Soil," for it gives in a nutshell the results of
years of patient study and investigation upon the most vital
question that now confronts the farmer: How shall he conserve his
soil? I have read it with great pleasure and profit.--FRED L. HATCH,
_Farmer, Spring Grove, Ill._
In the form of a story--a real, live, interesting story--the book
develops a very large number of highly important facts in connection
with soils and farm fertility. We have not seen anything like it
before and owing to the hold it gets upon the reader it will be a
power in carrying soil and fertility facts to many who would not
read the purely scientific works. The author is a leading authority
and the statements in the book are reliable.--_Ohio Farmer._
"The Story of the Soil," by Cyril G. Hopkins, Professor of Soils and
Crops, University of Illinois, a practical farmer and a scientific
soil investigator; a book of 360 pages printed on heavy wove white
paper, in strong and durable binding; illustrated with photographic
reproductions of actual results secured in profitable systems of
permanent soil improvement; with comprehensive index and glossary.
Price $1.00 Can also be obtained from the publisher for $1.12
postpaid.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Farm That Won't Wear Out, by Cyril G. Hopkins