TEE SOIL AS AN ECONOMIC FACTOR. 547 



the case. Instead of studying a soil and its situation, and determining 

 to what crop, or rotation of crops, it may be best adapted, the farmer 

 continues to cultivate the same crops his predecessors grew, or he puts 

 in one he may happen to wish for some fancied reason, possibly in some 

 cases caprice. For example, a man may wish a grass farm, and instead 

 of studying his soils to determine if they be adapted to this purpose, 

 he may sink hundreds of dollars in a vain attempt, foreordained neces- 

 sarily to failure, which might have been as surely foreseen. A good 

 illustration is the tobacco crop in southern Maryland. In many ways, 

 it is a fine crop to grow, making an attractive, handsome appearance 

 in the field, pleasing to one's esthetic sense. Moreover, it has been 

 grown in this region from time immemorial. But for various reasons, 

 it can no longer compete successfiilly with tobaccos from some other 

 regions, and now brings but very little money. Nevertheless, the people 

 are accustomed to this crop, they like its cultivation, and consequently 

 it remains a staple, although it is very well known that the soils devoted 

 to it are much better adapted to certain other crops which would in- 

 dubitably yield a vastly greater money return. 



Over the wider areas of our country this seems to be about the 

 spirit in which agricultural conditions are still viewed and met. Where 

 intensive agriculture is practised, as in the truck soils, or in the irri- 

 gated soils of the West, this is not the case, or not so frequently the 

 case, and can never be where intensive methods are practised, for it is 

 a necessary corollary of the high prices which lands under the intensive 

 system of cultivation command, that the crops for which they are best 

 adapted must be raised, or absolute failure inevitably follows. But 

 where the extensive methods of cultivation are practised, it is usually 

 possible to drift along on half crops or third crops, and still keep 

 matters going on a gradual decline until conditions are so bad that the 

 land is abandoned as barren, and pastures new are sought elsewhere. 



While the soil may be best adapted to some particular crop or rota- 

 tion, other conditions enter, or may make it more desirable to substitute 

 a different crop or rotation not so well suited. For questions of trans- 

 portation, or supply and demand, and of available labor, inevitably 

 enter into the business management of every farmer, and thus the soil 

 is an economic factor in every community. In certain areas of Arizona, 

 for instance, the soils, climatic conditions and general features indicate 

 most strongly the advisability of raising fruits. But the transporta- 

 tion facilities up to the present have been so unsatisfactory that, it 

 has been impossible for the Arizona horticulturists, even with earlier 

 crops than California, to put their products on the Eastern markets 

 at such figures as to compete satisfactorily with those from the latter 

 state. Again a case comes to mind of a plantation in eastern North 

 Carolina, with an unusually fine crop of peanuts, covering about 400 



