106 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



that we have the greatest incentive to invention and all kinds of 

 improvements. We are living in a fine land and living in the midst of 

 great opportunities, and yet the opportunities have not met all of the 

 conditions in this country as well as we might have met them. We hear 

 it said that we are the greatest soil robbers on the face of the earth, 

 and yet rather resent that statement, but the fact, nevertheless, is th'at 

 we have had so much free land where we can always go and get a new 

 farm after we have worn out the one we are on, that it has led us to 

 be extravagant and wasteful with regard to the opportunities and the 

 fertility of the land. But two centuries ago the fertile soils of Virginia 

 produced immense crops of tobacco, forming the most staple article of 

 commerce with England. Today, and for many years past, this rich soil 

 has become an ash heap hardly able to cover itself with vegetation with- 

 out the aid of commercial fertilizer. Likewise the alluvial plains of the 

 south have been reduced in their power to produce cotton from one and 

 a quarter to less than a quarter bale to the acre. Even the black corn 

 lands of Illinois and Iowa, and the great wheat prairies of Minnesota and 

 the Dakotas, have reduced their output per acre more than one-half. 

 The deposit of miles of our best top soils annually at the mouth of the 

 Mississippi speaks of the fearful erosion swiftly washing away the richest 

 part of our soils inch by inch. 



The destruction of organic matter and the removal of fertility elements 

 by single cropping, taking crops from the soil without returning any- 

 thing to it, is rapidly depleting the hank account of the farmers with 

 the soil. The introduction of crop pests and animal diseases is annually 

 reducing the power of our plants and animals to produce for us. In these 

 later years our people have awakened to the danger of such losses and 

 have taken steps to check them. Out of this movement has arisen the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, the state experiment stations 

 and the state departments of agriculure. These form a gigantic state 

 agency for the improvement of agriculture such as the world has never 

 before witnessed. The sum of money spent annually by this agency 

 would make the gold of a Midas and a Croesus look like a speck as com- 

 pared with the volume of the earth. As a result of this agency, single 

 crop systems are being replaced by diversified farming and balanced 

 systems of crop rotation returning to the soil more than the crop takes 

 away and still producing a bigger crop and larger profits for the farmer. 

 Low producing and unprofitable animals and plants are replaced by 

 pure-bread, high producers through the magic wand of plant and animal 

 breeding. Crop and animal pests are discovered, set against each other, 

 and destroyed before they get a foothold. 



EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES. 



Our educators have at last awakened to the necessity of teaching in 

 schools that which the learner must use in his daily life to gain his 

 livelihood and to make his life richer. Hence, great vocational school 

 systems have been built up. Agriculture has benefited particularly along 

 this line. 



