THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK PART VI. 259 



ducing large and profitable crops of each. The wonderful productiveness 

 of the soil encouraged and fostered a system of grain growing and 

 soil robbing, which in time, threatened to completely exhaust the fer- 

 tility of the land. When the pioneer farmer discovered that he had 

 worn out his fields and that they would no longer produce profitable 

 crops, he made haste to move to a new section. But, in these later days, 

 there is little available new corn land for the younger generation. In 

 many sections the children of the early settlers are today striving 10 

 solve the problem of restoring the fertility to the soils. 



WE HAVE LEABNED. 



Many have learned that a one-crop system of farming assuredly 

 brings poverty and want to any community. Many, too, have advanced 

 a step and now realize how much more steady the profit is in meat and 

 milk than it is in corn and wheat; how much better corn pays in cattle, 

 hogs and sheep than when sold to the grain buyer. When all grain 

 growers master this one underlying principle in successful agriculture 

 a new and brighter era will come most speedily and with a promise of 

 reward rich almost beyond comparison. The problem, then, before every 

 corn grower is to keep up the fertility of his soil in order that he may 

 continue to produce profitable crops. We offer a few special methods by 

 which the mechanical as well as the chemical condition of the soil may 

 be improved at the same time that profitable crops are produced. 



IMPROVE THE SOIL. 



The leguminous crops, e. g., soy beans, cow peas, clover and alfalfa 

 furnish one of the best means of building up soil fertility. They are 

 grown under widely different conditions and are especially beneficial 

 to the soil and valuable as feeds. 



Increased yields of from five to fifteen bushels per acre a re fre- 

 quently reported where corn follows one of the legumes in a rotation. 

 The great value of leguminous crops is based on the fact that they furnish 

 the cheapest food for stock and the cheapest manure for the soil. Thi3 

 is true because they obtain from the air nitrogen, a substance neces- 

 sary for plants and animals alike, which costs in the form of fertilizers 

 and feed stuffs fifteen to twenty cents per pound. 



The soy-bean and cow-pea have been found to be as valuable as ordi- 

 nary red clover hay and the crop is harvested in much the same way. 

 in rich, black prairie loam the soy bean is more successmul than the 

 cow-pea. The latter, on rich land, produces an excessive growth of vine 

 with very little seed. 



However, these leguminous crops cannot be rotated with corn indefi- 

 nitely when tne entire growth is annually removed from the land. They 

 add much to the available nitrogen in the soil, but they do not add potash 

 and phosphorus. Continuous cropping of any kind will sooner or later 

 exhaust the land. Therefore it is important that every corn grower 

 heed the warning of waning fertility and speedily learn that there is no 



