PREFACE 



Progressive Agriculture has been selected as 

 the title of this book for the reason that these 

 two words have much meaning to the American 

 people on two very vital lines. 



Progressive, as defined in the dictionary, means 

 going forward, advancement, improvement, de- 

 veloping greater things, conditions, crops. Agri- 

 culture is farming, husbandry, tillage, the raising 

 of food for man and beast. Therefore applied 

 Progressive Agriculture means briefly increased 

 prosperity and happiness. 



In semi-humid regions the problem of general 

 farming is one of how to avoid waste. Twenty- 

 one years ago we began writing and speaking on 

 the subject of soil tillage to conserve the moisture 

 and obtain better crops, having begun our obser- 

 vations 14 years before. Now we are able to 

 give in these pages results of 35 years of actual 

 field experiments in the rich region which stretches 

 from the Missouri valley to the Pacific and from 

 Mexico to the north boundary of Alberta. Much 

 progress was made in the early years, but never 

 so much as in the past four years, in which time 

 we have had the hearty cooperation of a large 

 number of progressive farmers, over a wide scope 

 of country. 



Our ideas have undergone change with better 

 knowledge of the problem and a more practical 

 field information as the result; and while in a I 

 way there is nothing fundamentally new in it, 1 



