60 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



State Board of Agriculture, and to come before them to speak of some- 

 thing I believe to be of vital importance to our State. 



If we look about us today, we will find on every hand changes which 

 are rapidly taking place. We will find that new ideas are coming in, 

 that progressive methods are taking the place of old ones in agi'iculture 

 throughout the country. These new ideas and new methods must nec- 

 essarily mean many other changes. They rhean for us a higher life; 

 they mean for the live stock men and the crop men greater profits; they 

 mean changed conditions in our farming; they mean a higher living; 

 they mean better farmers, and we certainly need to have a part in mould- 

 ing these changes. 



The farmer has many problems before him today, and many of them 

 are of vital interest to this State. Indiana is a great agricultural State, 

 and we certainly must give attention to some of the problems that affect 

 agriculture. The farmer has to meet problems of a varied nature. We 

 have come to realize that the farmer needs to 1)e the biggest sort of 

 a man, because he has the biggest sort of problems to handle, and he 

 has more of them than any other man in the world. If we study the 

 problems of agriculture today we find that there is the problem of the 

 crops to grow, the problem of tillage, the problem of the selection of 

 seed, the problem of harvesting, the problem of the nutrition of the crops, 

 the problem of labor, and many others of like interest. We all realize 

 that the problem of labor is a most important one, one of the most im- 

 portant problems we have to face; but under all this, and back of all 

 this there is a still greater problem, I believe the greatest problem our 

 farmers today have to face, that of Maintaining soil fertility. We only 

 have to study the conditions in New England or the South, or, coming 

 a little closer home to our Northwest, or even into our own State, and 

 we will see that there is a waning of soil fertility. Some of you may ask 

 liow it is that we are raising more corn to the acre today than ever 

 before. That may be true, but it is not due to the fact that we have 

 built up the soil fertility, or that we are building it up very rapidly. 

 There are some few who are making improvements along this line, but 

 our increased yields of corn are very largely due to a changed condition 

 of affairs which has nothing to do with the maintaining of soil fertility. 

 We have drained the land, we are doing better tillage, and consequently 

 we are reaping greater rewards for our work; it is not because we are 

 increasing the fertility. The question of maintaining the soil fertility 

 is one that has been neglected too long. This is acknowledged on all 

 sides. Farmers are discussing it everywhere, and are beginning to study 

 how to increase the fertility of their soil. They may discuss the ques- 

 tion of clover, or of cowpeas or of rotation of crops, but it all comes 

 back to the question of building up wornout land. When we come to 

 look over the situation we find that we must be doing something, that 

 we must awake to the fact that our soil is decreasing in fertility, and 



