THE FARM SCHEME
Farming is no pink tea. It is a serious business. After the young
farmer has selected the farm he must develop his farm scheme. He must
contemplate well and seriously the philosophy which underlies his
plans. Unless he sees clearly what he is striving to attain and unless
he understands the effect of his methods, he must fail in great
measure to obtain his goal.
Satisfactory results in farming cannot be obtained as a general
practice if the man is only interested in the results of a single
year. For this reason the itinerant tenant system will not be
satisfactory unless the landlord has worked out a satisfactory scheme
which he requires his tenant to follow.
It is not enough that a man shall grow a single large crop, but it is
necessary that he should continue to grow a satisfactory crop at least
at regular intervals. For example, a piece of land may be adapted to
cabbage, celery, potatoes or hay. Assume for the moment it is adapted
to cabbage and that by one or more seasons of preparation an enormous
crop of cabbages may be secured. This fact is of little value unless
sufficient quantity is raised and the process can be repeated
annually. Cabbages cannot be grown again on this particular piece of
land for from four to six years on account of club root. If the farmer
does not have other areas which he can bring into cabbages year after
year, for from three to five years, then he becomes a failure as a
cabbage raiser. Even a perennial, like alfalfa or asparagus, should
form a part of the general scheme of crop production if the most
satisfactory results are to be obtained.
There are two general questions at the basis of all farm schemes: (1)
How to obtain a fairly uniform succession of cash products year after
year, and (2) how to keep up or improve the fertility of the soil
economically while doing so. In other words, how to keep the
investment from decreasing while it is earning a satisfactory and
fairly uniform income.
It is necessary, therefore, to consider what products are to be sold
and what are simply subsidiary to the cash products. The cash products
may, of course, be soil products or animal products, but more likely
they will be both. When animals form a large part of the enterprise
the cropping system must be carefully adjusted to meet the needs of
these animals. Many apparently trivial details must be considered, as
for example, whether the cropping system furnishes too little or too
much bedding for the live stock.
In considering profits the enterprise as a whole must be kept in view.
For example, if a man is producing milk, it may be cheaper, so far as
the production of milk is concerned, to allow the liquid excrement to
run to waste rather than to arrange for sufficient bedding. If,
however, by using an abundance of bedding and saving all the
high-priced nitrogen and the larger part of the potash in the manure,
he is able to raise twelve tons of silage in place of eight tons, or
three tons of hay in place of two tons, his enterprise as a whole will
be more profitable when he uses the extra amount of bedding, although
so far as the production of a quart of milk is concerned the cost is
increased. It may be that by feeding corn to cattle or sheep one will
obtain only 50 cents a bushel for his maize, while his neighbor is
selling it to the elevator at 60 cents. If, however, the man who feeds
his maize year after year thereby raises 60 bushels instead of 40
bushels, his enterprise, as a whole, may be more profitable than that
of his neighbor.
As a matter of fact, the Pennsylvania experiment station has
substantially these two conditions in certain of its fertilizer plats.
When for 25 years the conditions have been similar to those where
crops are sold from the farm, the yields have been: Maize, 42 bushels;
oats, 32 bushels; wheat, 14 bushels; and hay, 2,783 pounds per acre.
But when conditions exist which represent the feeding of corn, oats
and hay and the return of manure to the soil, the yields have been:
Maize, 58 bushels; oats, 41 bushels; wheat, 23 bushels; and hay 4,190
pounds per acre. In the first instance the value of the products has
been $15.75 an acre, while in the other case it has been $22.90 an
acre.
Having worked out a cropping system that gives the proper yearly
production of several crops desired, the next question to decide is
how this cropping system and the disposition of the crops is going to
affect the fertility of the soil. From a financial or economic point
of view the most important soil element is nitrogen. First, because it
costs from 18 to 20 cents a pound, while phosphoric acid can be
purchased at five cents, potash at four cents; and, second, because of
the readiness with which nitrogen may disappear from the soil under
improper management, either through nitrification and leaching or by
denitrification and passing back into the air.
Assuming a given type of management, the question is, How much of the
required nitrogen will be obtained from the legumes in the cropping
system, how much from the manure, and how much must be purchased in
commercial fertilizers? No satisfactory cropping system can be devised
at the present prices of farm products and cost of fertilizers for the
production of the ordinary cereals and hay that does not include the
production of some legume. Assuming a legume in the cropping scheme,
the fertility of the soil may be maintained by yard manure alone or by
commercial fertilizers alone. Illustrations of both methods are to be
found in actual practice. Generally speaking, however, the use of yard
manure supplemented with commercial fertilizers will be found more
scientific and in the end the most economical.
A factor entering into this problem will be the amount of purchased
feed. If considerable amounts of purchased feeds are used and the
resulting manure carefully preserved and judiciously applied, the
commercial fertilizers required will be reduced to the minimum.
A concrete illustration may bring out the philosophy underlying farm
schemes better than abstract problems.
The following outline shows a five-course rotation with the method of
fertilization which the results of the Pennsylvania Station indicated
would be advisable, at least on limestone soils in eastern United
States.
1. Maize yard manure, 8 tons per acre.
2. Oats nothing.
3. Wheat acid phosphate, 350 lbs.
muriate of potash, 100 lbs.
4. Clover and timothy nothing.
5. Timothy nitrate of soda, 150 lbs.
acid phosphate, 150 lbs.
muriate of potash, 50 lbs.
This rotation is suggested for the purpose of maintaining a farm that
is already in a fairly fertile condition and one on which there is no
considerable amount of purchased feed. Where concentrates are
purchased liberally, yard manure should be available to use on the
timothy and meadow in place of the commercial fertilizers.
Where there is plenty of manure and it is desired to increase the
amount of maize and hay and reduce the amount of oats and wheat, the
following rotation and method of fertilization would be indicated:
1. Maize acid phosphate, 200 lbs.
2. Maize yard manure, 8 tons.
3. Oats nothing.
4. Wheat acid phosphate, 350 lbs.
muriate of potash, 100 lbs.
5. Clover and timothy nothing.
6. Timothy nitrate of soda, 150 lbs.
acid phosphate, 150 lbs.
muriate of potash, 50 lbs.
7. Timothy yard manure, 8 tons.
Where there is plenty of yard manure, it would be also applied to
maize under No. 1, or the yard manure could be applied to maize under
No. 1, and commercial fertilizer applied to timothy under No. 6 could
be repeated under No. 7. If the land is more or less depleted, an
application of 200 pounds of acid phosphate to the oats would be
advisable. However, the purpose is not to prescribe exact methods, but
to point out underlying principles and their possible application.
As further illustration, it seems probable that the practice of a
market gardener in using excessive amounts of stable manure might, in
some instances at least, be modified to good advantage by reducing the
amount of manure and increasing the amount of commercial fertilizer
used. Unfortunately there is no experimental evidence bearing upon
this question.
Potash required to maintain fertility is largely to be found in the
coarse fodder, such as hay, maize stover and silage, and in the straw
used for bedding; hence where these substances are used in abundance
and returned to the soil the amount of potash required to be supplied
in fertilizers is reduced to a minimum. Where, however, the amount of
live stock is limited and the products sold contain large quantities
of potash, such as hay and straw, the supply furnished in fertilizers
must be liberal.
Phosphoric acid is always being slowly depleted from the soil either
from the sale of farm crops or animal products. There is no way of
returning this loss completely, except from the addition of a
commercial fertilizer.
The above fertilizer suggestions are based on the experiments covering
a period of more than 25 years on a limestone soil. Soils may modify
materially the amount and application of the fertilizers, but not the
principles enunciated. For example, a soil on which common red clover
grows luxuriantly and has a prominent place in the farm scheme will
require less nitrogen in commercial fertilizers in order to maintain
the fertility than where legumes are raised with difficulty or do not
form a part of the farm scheme.
One of the most important points to be emphasized is the fact that
haphazard fertilization is not effective in maintaining soil
fertility. If one starts out to establish a five-course rotation and
build up his soil through a rational system of fertilization, he will
obviously not obtain the full benefit of the rotation until he begins
to get crops from the second round, which will be the sixth year from
the beginning. It may happen, and unfortunately it has perhaps usually
happened in the past, that during the first rotation the increase in
crops has not paid for the cost of the fertilizers applied. In many
instances a rational system of fertilization has not been introduced
because the owner of the land could not afford to wait six years for
his return. Profit in farming, therefore, does not consist in raising
one big crop or even in obtaining a large balance on the right side of
the ledger in a single year. It is both interesting and valuable to
know that five tons of timothy hay, 45 bushels of wheat, 100 bushels
of maize and 40 tons of cabbage may be raised on an acre, but the real
profit in farming only comes through a lifetime of effort. To the man
of capacity who prepares for his work the results will surely come,
but they will not come all at once and, as in every other business, he
must pay the price in hard work and close application to details.
In this connection it may be emphasized that one of the difficulties
in successful farming is to find one man both interested and capable
along the various lines essential to a successful farm enterprise. The
danger is that a man will ride his hobby to the detriment of the other
activities of the farm. A farmer friend of the writer, who keeps a
horse and buggy, cares so little for a horse that for several years he
has walked two miles each morning and each evening rather than to take
the trouble to hitch up his horse. If one visits a high-grade breeder
of dairy cattle, he is very apt to find his pigs of ordinary
character. On the other hand, a specialist in hogs is likely to keep
scrub cows. A man may be an excellent wheat raiser and a poor potato
grower, and the reverse. The breeder of live stock is likely to be
lacking in his methods of producing farm crops, while the up-to-date,
so-called general farmer is not likely to be a special lover of live
stock. In like manner, the man may be a successful farmer, dairyman or
horticulturist from the producing side, but be a poor salesman. In
fact, those qualities of mind and heart which make for the best
success from the standpoint of production, whether soil products or
animal products, is not that which makes the best trader.
It is not expected that the young farmer will be materially different
from his hundreds of thousands of predecessors, but the better a man
is trained and the more fully he studies his own adaptabilities and
deficiencies, the more likely he is to succeed in the open country.
For this reason, the young man should be careful to get as broad a
training as possible. It is, therefore, often more important for him
to study those things which he dislikes than to study the things for
which he has a natural taste.
There was a man in our town
And he was wondrous wise.
He knew that if he wanted crops
He'd have to fertilize.
"Its nitrogen that makes things green,"
Said this man of active brain;
"And potash makes the good strong straw,
And phosphate plumps the grain.
But it's clearly wrong to waste plant food
On a wet and soggy field;
I'll surely have to put in drains
If I'd increase the yield.
"And after I have drained the land
I must plow it deep all over;
And even then I'll not succeed
Unless it will grow clover.
Now, acid soils will not produce
A clover sod that's prime;
So if I have a sour soil,
I'll have to put on lime.
"And after doing all these things,
To make success more sure,
I'll try my very best to keep
From wasting the manure.
So I'll drain, and lime, and cultivate,
With all that that implies;
And when I've done that thoroughly
I'll manure and fertilize."
_Vivian_