40 ORGANIC MATTER 
stalks and burned them. The other never allowed a 
stalk or a straw to be burned on his land. After fifteen 
years the former farmer’s farm yielded fifteen bushels 
of corn less to the acre than when he first commenced 
farming it, while the latter’s farm produced as well as 
it did at the beginning of the fifteen years. 
One hundred bushels of corn contains about 100 
pounds of nitrogen, 17 pounds of phosphorus and 19 
pounds of potassium. 
The stalks upon which the too bushels of corn grew 
contain about 48 pounds of nitrogen, 6 pounds of phos- 
phorus and 52 pounds of potassium. All these ele- 
ments in the stalks have a money value of $11.04. 
These elements in the corn itself are lost to the soil 
if the corn be sold, but that in the stalks can be saved 
to the soil if the stalks are not burned but are plowed 
under. 
In the black prairies of Illinois and Iowa and the 
rich river bottom lands of Indiana, are vast acres of 
land that used to produce an average crop of sixty or 
more bushels of corn to the acre. The average is now 
less than forty bushels to the acre. 
The virgin richness of these lands could have been 
continued simply by the plowing under of the corn 
stalks grown on them. 
The American farmer must learn the lesson of getting 
organic matter into his soil or his farm is doomed. 
We must learn the lesson that the restoration of or- 
ganic matter to the soil is the only way to increase its 
crop-producing power. 
That no soil is complete without it. That the very 
