. CHAPTER X 



THE CEOP 



Effect of Unwise Cropping. Every farmer desires 

 to be prosperous. He tries to raise those crops which 

 will give him the largest returns in money; but often, 

 in his anxiety to do this, he takes too little heed for 

 the future. He reasons thus : "If tobacco is a high 

 price and my soil will raise good tobacco, then tobacco 

 is the crop for me to raise." So, year after year, he 

 plants tobacco, until he finds that his soil will no longer 

 raise a good crop of tobacco or anything else. Plainly, 

 he has made a great mistake. What is the matter ? 



Tobacco Exhausts the Soil. The explanation is not 

 hard to find. Tobacco is very hard on the soil, as you 

 will readily see by consulting the table showing the 

 amount of fertilizing substances in farm crops. Be- 

 sides, tobacco requires the same kind of food, year 

 after year, and unless the farmer has made a careful 

 study of this crop, and of the fertilizers needed for its 

 proper growth, his soil soon becomes exhausted of 

 some of its fertilizing substances. The same is true 

 of wheat, or corn, or any other crop, grown year after 

 year on the same piece of ground. So the farmer 



