THE UNIVERSITY AND THE FARM 105 



smaller, its products more diverse, its cultivation more intense, its 

 value per unit higher, and the products selected for growing those 

 which are in greatest demand, and in the market where the net profit 

 is highest. 



AGRICULTURAL POLICY OF THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE 



In the light of these facts, there seem to be certain conditions 

 which will modify our agriculural policy for the immediate future. 



In the first place, we are bound to conserve and, if possible, to 

 increase the fertility of our land. We must not allow it to run down 

 further ; rather we must restore those parts of it that have run down. 

 How to do this is a problem for the solution of which the farmers of 

 the state are entitled to look to the University Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station for help. Much has been done in the study of the ap- 

 plication of chemistry to agriculture. Little has been done in the 

 study of the improvement of plant life, and in the study of plant dis- 

 ease and the remedies therefor, in order to give us a larger and more 

 healthy product and to eliminate the waste of diseased products. This 

 field is a proper subject for study at the University. 



In the second place, it is clear that our cultivation must become 

 more intensive. It is easy to say that we can raise seventy-five or one 

 hundred bushels per acre in Illinois of this crop or that crop, instead 

 of the forty or fifty that we have been raising. In the past a great 

 deal of foolish talk of this kind has been indulged in. There has 

 never been any doubt in the mind of anyone who is conversant with 

 the facts that we could increase the output per acre of any of our crops, 

 but at a cost. The farmer's problem, so far as he can control the 

 amount of his production, is to get a product which, at the prices that 

 can be secured for it when put upon the market, will yield him a net 

 profit. Society's problem is to find a system of agriculture which will 

 produce enough to meet the demands of men and women for living, 

 at prices which they can reasonably pay, while at the same time letting 

 the farmer have the profit necessary to induce him to continue his 

 business and to prosper like the rest of the community. It is non- 

 sense, therefore, to tell the farmer that he should increase his output 

 per acre without showing him that the increasing cost of every ad- 

 ditional bushel will be met by a larger market and an increased price 

 per bushel. While, therefore, in the next twenty-five years Illinois 

 agriculture is bound to be more and more intensive, one of the ways 

 in which it may become so is by the discovery of methods of cultivation 

 which will reduce costs of production. This, again, is a field for 



