1908 



THE GOVERNORS' CONFERENCE 



323 



the richest land in the country has been 

 brought under cultivation. We should, 

 therefore, in the same time, have raised pro- 

 portionately the yield of our principal 

 crops per acre; because the yield of old 

 lands, if properly treated, tends to increase 

 rather than diminish. The year 1906 was 

 one of large crops and can scarcely be taken 

 as a standard. We produced, for example, 

 more corn that year than had ever been 

 grown in the United States in a single year 

 before. But the average yield per acre was 

 less than it was in 1872. We are barely 

 keeping the acre product stationary. The 

 average wheat crop of the country now 

 ranges from twelve and one-half, in ordin- 

 ary years, to fifteen bushels per acre in the 

 best seasons. And so it is on down the 

 line. 



But the fact of soil waste becomes start- 

 lingly evident when we examine the record 

 of some states where single cropping and 

 other agricultural abuses have been preval- 

 ent. Take the case of wheat, the mainstay 

 of single-crop abuse. Many of us can re- 

 member when New York was the great 

 wheat-producing state of the Union. The 

 average yield of wheat per acre in New 

 York for the las ten years was about eigh- 

 teen bushels. For the first five years of that 

 ten-year period it was 18.4 bushels, and for 

 the last five 17.4 bushels. In the farther 

 West, Kansas takes high rank as a wheat 

 producer. Its average yield per acre for the 

 last ten years was 14.16 bushels. For the 

 first five years it was 15.14 and for the last 

 five 13.18. Up in the Northwest, Minnesota 

 wheat has made a name all over the world. 

 Her average yield per acre for the same 

 ten years was 12.96 bushels. For the first 

 five years it was 13.12 and for the last 

 five 12.8. We perceive here the working of 

 a uniform law, independent of location, soil 

 or climate. It is the law of a diminishing 

 return due to soil destruction. Apply this 

 to the country at large, and it reduces agri- 

 culture to the condition of a bank whose 

 depositors are steadily drawing out more 

 money than they put in. 



What is true in this instance is true of 

 our agriculture as a whole. In no other 

 important country in the world, with the 

 exception of Russia, is the industry that 

 must be the foundation of every state, at so 

 low an ebb as in our own. According to 

 the last census the average annual product 

 per acre of the farms of the whole United 

 States was worth $11.38. It is little more 

 than a respectable rental in communities 

 where the soil is properly cared for and 

 made to give a reasonable return for culti- 

 vation. There were but two states in the 

 Union whose total value of farm products 

 was over $30 per acre of improved land. 

 The great state of Illinois gave but $12.48, 

 and Minnesota showed only $8.74. No dis- 

 crimination attaches to these figures, where 

 all are so much at fault. Nature has given 

 to us the most valuable possession ever 



committed to man. It can never be dupli- 

 cated, because there is none like it upon the 

 face of the earth. And we are racking and 

 impoverishing it exactly as we are feUing 

 the forests and rifling the mines. Our soil, 

 once the envy of every other country, the 

 attraction which draws millions of immi- 

 grants across the seas, gave an average 

 yield for the whole United States during the 

 ten years beginning with 1896 of 13.5 bush- 

 els of wheat per acre. Austria and Hun- 

 garv each produced over seventeen bushels 

 per acre, France 19.8, Germany 27.6 and the 

 United Kingdom 32.2 bushels per acre, 

 tor the same decade our average yield of 

 oats was less than thirty bushels, while 

 Germany produced forty-six and Great 

 Britain forty-two. For barley the figures 

 are twenty-five against thirty-three and 

 34.6; for rye 15.4 against twenty-four for 

 Germany and twenty-six for Ireland. In 

 the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Nether- 

 lands and Denmark a yield of more than 

 thirty bushels of wheat per acre has been 

 the average for the past five years. * * * 

 Our agricultural lands have been abused 

 in two practical ways; first by single 

 cropping, and second by neglecting fer- 

 tilization. It is fortunate for us that na- 

 ture is slow to anger, and that we may 

 arrest the consequence of this ruinous 

 policy before it is too late. In all parts 

 of the United States the system of tillage 

 has been to select the crop which would 

 bring in the most money at the current mar- 

 ket rate, to plant that year after year, and to 

 move on to virgin fields as soon as the old 

 farm rebelled by lowering the quality and 

 quantity of its return. It is still the 

 practice ; although diversification of in- 

 dustry and the rotation of crops have 

 been urged for nearly a century and 

 are today taught in every agricultural 

 college in this country. The demonstra- 

 tion of the evils of single cropping is 

 mathematical in its completeness. At 

 the experiment station of the Agricul- 

 tural College of the University of Min- 

 nesota they have maintained 44 experi- 

 mental plots of ground, adjoining one 

 another, and as nearly identical in soil, 

 cultivation and care as scientific hand- 

 ling can make them. On these have 

 been tried and compared different meth- 

 ods of crop rotation and fertilization, to- 

 gether with systems of single cropping. 

 The results of ten years' experiment 

 are now available. On a tract of good 

 ground sown continuously for ten years 

 to wheat, the average yield per acre for 

 the first five years was 20.22 bushels 

 and for the next five 16.92 bushels. 

 Where corn was grown continuously on 

 one plot while on the plot beside it 

 corn was planted but once in five years 

 in a system of rotation, the average 

 yield of the latter for the two years it was 

 under corn was 48.2 bushels per acre. 

 The plot where corn was grown gave 



