480 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



plished, served as an inspiration and an incentive to other farmers to do 

 the same along the same lines. For instance, if it can be shown that a 

 farmer may sell one acre of clover hay for about eight dollars and he can 

 add to that possibly six or eight dollars by selling the seed from the same, 

 he is Idsing money, it will be of benefit to him. He has thus obtained say 

 fourteen or fifteen dollars per acre from the clover crop, but in doing this 

 he has not realized the results he should have realized. He is talcing 

 from the land that which he should have applied to the soil, and he has 

 left the soil impoverished rather than enriched. On the other hand if 

 the farmer pastures on his acre hogs and other stock, the same acre of 

 clover that brought a return of fourteen dollars in clover hay and in 

 seed, will produce twenty dollars' worth of meat. And at the same time 

 he has loft his soil in a good condition. He has done for the soil what he 

 started out to do when he sowed it in clover. Now if these results can 

 be given in the line of statistical information and the farmer can be 

 made to know and understand that in the sowing of the clover and the 

 feeding of the swine upon the land he is able to increase his income a 

 very large per cent, and at the same time fertilize his soil, he has made 

 a good point, and other farmers are willing to do likewise. The same 

 thing may be said of the cultivation of wheat in a large way. There was 

 a time in the State of Indiana when the raising of wheat was considered 

 a profitable business. I can remember when there was but little wheat 

 cultivated in Indiana, in the early days of our history, and I am not 

 a very old man either, and yet I have seen the original forests of Indiana. 

 The first great troul)le with us in growing wheat was that it would grow 

 up so rank that it would fall down and we had to cut it with a sickle. 

 This eonaition does not exist today. Why not? Simply because we have 

 been raising wheat until we have worn out the soil. We have been 

 robbing the soil of the phosphates and not supplying nitrogen to the soil, 

 but have been selling it, and have kept this up until the land refuses to 

 respond to our efforts to grow wheat. Now, what shall we do in this 

 matter? Shall we resort to commercial fertilizers? What is a commer- 

 cial fertilizer? What is the principal ingredient? What is the element 

 we are supplying to the soil? Largely the nitrogen, when the cheapest 

 source of that in the world is all around us, and if we will sow clover, 

 and plant peas in our corn field after we are through cultivating it, they 

 will do the worlc for us, and it will be better done than we can do it 

 by commercial fertilizers. Peas are good fertilizer. They supply a small 

 amount of phosphates, and a large per cent, of nitrogen, and we get 

 good results. When we continue to raise wheat year after year on the 

 same soil our land is impoverished. Statistics will show that these con- 

 ditions are brought about by this kind of farming. 



It seems to me that we should do something toward bettering the con- 

 ditions of our farmers and encouraging them along better lines of agri- 

 culture at this time. It seems to me that this is one thing that should be 

 done. 



