86 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



siders and that we farmers must consider, for they are funda- 

 mental. 



Building up fertility builds up the yield. For instance, the 

 profit in a corn crop is in the excess yield above 35 or 40 bushels, 

 for the cost and expense eat up the latter. 



Worn-out soil and increasing population are the serious 

 questions from a food supply standpoint, but the more serious 

 feature is that our shiftless and heedless methods of farming are 

 responsible for declining fertility and yields. The Illinois Experi- 

 ment Station shows on its thirty-year plots in corn every year a 

 present yield of 8 bushels per acre, with oats and corn alternating 

 27 bushels of corn; with a three-year rotation of oats, clover and 

 then corn, 80 bushels per acre. 



The soil and the man on the soil are the essential and final 

 assets of the nation, and when the man has starved the soil 

 until its declining returns have forced an unnatural and abnormal 

 advance in prices, and no part of this advance has been returned 

 to and used to build up the soil, then, indeed, is it time to call 

 a halt. In certain sections of New York State one farm in three 

 has been abandoned on account of worn-out soil, while in Ohio 

 farmers themselves have returned figures .to the state showing 

 141,000 abandoned acres. 



As showing what a difference in yield may come from seed 

 alone, sixteen Ohio farmers, each on the terms of a contest, 

 selected his best seed corn and one of their number planted each 

 farmer's seed in a separate acre in one sixteen-acre tract. The 

 soil, cultivation, rain, sunshine, all conditions were precisely the 

 same, yet the yields varied from 53 to 80 bushels per acre. 



Farm demonstration — the carrying of the new farm methods 

 right to the farmer on the farm — is the most important single 

 feature of all the work to be done, and the adoption of these 

 permanent methods is a condition precedent to all the better 

 conditions and uplift that are to follow — including better farm 

 financing facilities. All good citizens and friends of agriculture 

 should and will aid in the work to build it up and bring it and 

 the farmer and his family into their own. Yet, the burden is 

 largely on the farmer, for he is responsible for his methods and 

 attitude now that the better ideas are at hand. 



It behooves us all to take up our part in the great work of 

 the redemption of American agriculture so pregnant with 

 results to the whole nation and to the generations to come. 



