14 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 



BASED ON EXTENSIVE INVESTIGATIONS 



The extensive organization for soil investigations put into opera- 

 tion by the Illinois Experiment Station under the direction of Dr. 

 Hopkins is the most extensive of any that has ever been operated 

 and should be continued. The soil survey should be completed as 

 rapidly as possible while there is yet time to complete it under the 

 present direction, not only in order to carry out the present standard 

 of detail and accuracy but to give it that uniformity of classification 

 which can best be attained in work of this kind when it is done by the 

 same individual. I would recommend that the soil experiment fields 

 be fully continued, for the longer they are operated, the greater is the 

 worth of the results. New and unforeseen results and problems are 

 appearing in the long-time operated fields, which did not show earlier. 

 These fields, which are also used as demonstration fields to show the 

 effects of soil treatment on crop production to farmers, are visited an- 

 nually by many farmers and landowners. A community interest in 

 them has already developed, and I believe the people would resent 

 anything which endangered their continuance. 



A PERMANENT AND STEADY FOOD SUPPLY 



To sum it all up: The thing which distinguishes the Illinois 

 System of Permanent Agriculture is its object; which is to bring about 

 a permanent and steadily increasing human food supply, limited more 

 by human labor than by earth's resources. The one condition is that 

 the system must be profitable as a business, for if agriculture cannot 

 prosper it cannot continue. The system is distinctive in that it may 

 be practised equally by all farmers, with little competition between 

 one farmer and another. As far as possible, it displaces costly human 

 effort in the form of commercial fertilizers by using instead the free- 

 to-all natural forces and resources. It solves the problem of treat- 

 ment specifically for each and every type of soil. It provides in a 

 practical way for the return to the soil of each of the elements of plant 

 food taken from it by cropping or by leaching, and in such a generous 

 way that more is actually given back than is taken out, so that the 

 final replenishment of the earth's soils is assured. In short, the sys- 

 tem builds up the soil. It brings back again to profitable productive- 

 ness lands long since barren and abandoned ; and it shows the way by 

 which all lands that can be cultivated may, as time goes on, become 

 capable of producing more and more food. 



