THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM 93 



almost unbelievable that the Department of Agricul- 

 ture should have put itself on record as discouraging 

 the American farmer from doing all possible toward 

 maintaining the fertility of the soil, and especially any 

 of those things which science, as well as all human 

 experience, has so clearly pointed out as being neces- 

 sary. If instead of this discouragement, the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture had impressed upon the American 

 farmer some of the facts disclosed in Tables Nos. 5 

 and 8; viz., that when he burned the straw and stub- 

 ble from his grain fields he was, in these indispensable 

 food elements, destroying what would cost him from 

 $2.50 to $3 per acre to replace; that when he burned 

 his stalk field, instead of plowing it under, he was 

 losing, in soil elements, what would cost him from $3 

 to $4 to replace, and besides these a vast amount of 

 humus, indispensable in putting these elements into 

 solution, thus making them available as plant food. 

 If farmers had been impressed with these facts, do 

 you think that for the last twenty years, our prairies 

 would, for weeks, be lighted up with burning stubble 

 fields, stock fields and straw stacks, and our average 

 grain yields per acre constantly decreasing? This 

 waste is preventable. It simply comes from lack of 

 knowledge that should, and could, easily have been 

 furnished by the Department of Agriculture and the 

 Agricultural Educational Institutions. 



In 1860, we had upon our lands the most intelligent 

 and industrious farmers that ever tilled the earth. 

 From the Alleghanies west, it was then practically a 

 virgin soil; so the appalling contrast in yields per 

 acre can only be accounted for in the methods of 



