Crops and Cropping 169 



that the use of commercial fertiHzers is a mistake. The 

 all-cotton man dribbles a little in the furrow for the crop, 

 all of which is at once taken up by the crop, and a fur- 

 ther draft is made on the store of plant food in the soil. 

 The result is that the land grows poorer instead of better. 



At a farmers' institute in a Southern State, a chemist 

 stated in our hearing that the only purpose of the com- 

 mercial fertiHzers is to make crops, and that they cannot 

 be used for the permanent improvement of the soil. I 

 combated this statement at once. This is what the cotton 

 farmers have always practiced and have grown poor in 

 doing it. My idea is that the true purpose of the com- 

 mercial fertiHzers when properly used, is to start the im- 

 provement of the land through a proper rotation of crops 

 and the growing of the legumes. Some have imbibed the 

 error that a good rotation of crops is in itself a method of 

 improvement, when in fact a rotation is designed to get 

 more out of the land by increasing its humus contents and 

 thus rendering available much that would otherwise not 

 be gotten from the soil. 



As we have shown, a short rotation in which the legume 

 crops come in frequently on the land as a means for get- 

 ting the use of the free nitrogen of the air and also of in- 

 creasing the humus-making material in the soil, demands 

 that we keep up the supply in the soil of the mineral mat- 

 ters, phosphoric acid and potash, for, while the legumes 

 will get us the nitrogen and combine it in organic matter 

 to be brought into use for the succeeding crops, they are, 

 at the same time, the most greedy consumers of the min- 

 eral elements. 



Therefore, while an injudicious use of commercial fer- 



