November, 1921 



SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE 



91 



tain the fertility of the soil by shifting his 

 crops in a system of rotation. The fund- 

 amental principle is still ti'ue — you can- 

 not contiiHuiUy take from, without adding 

 to. 



;i In the older parts of Canada where 

 live stock production predominates, there 

 is not a small number of faimers who be- 

 lieve and teach*that nothing should be sold 

 from the farm except in the shape of live- 

 stock, and that if livestock are kept to the 

 extent of the ability of the farm to support 

 them, thei-e will be no need of bringing in 

 fertility in the shape of fertilizers. 



Now, strange to say, livestock men w^io 

 put forth this idea are not building up the 

 fertility of the country, much less are they 

 working to their own best interests. Mid- 

 dleton in an article on recent development 

 in German agriculture published by the 

 Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, Eng- 

 land, in 1916, concretely illustrated the 

 outcome of such a policy when he compared 

 the operation of a 100 acre farm in Germ- 

 any with the management of an eq'jal area 

 in England. He showed that, under the 

 German system, the hundred acre farm 

 produced 50 per cent more milk than the 

 English farm and about the same amount 

 of livestock, while the grain produced on 

 the German farm was nearly double that 

 grown on the English farm. 100 acres of 

 tillable land in Germany supported 50 per 

 cent, more people than 100 acres of ap- 

 l)roximately as good land in England. Now 

 what w^as the history of the operation of- 

 these two farms? 



The German farmer placed his soil 

 fertility first. He did. not attempt to keep 

 livestock simply to produce manure, nor 

 yet did he attempt to feed to his live- 

 stock everything that was grown on the 

 farm. Indeed, his livestock consumed all 

 the Avaste material on the farm such as 

 straw, cornstalks, sugar-beet pulp and 

 refuse, and the like, and he imported in- 

 creasing amounts of fertilizer so that his 

 grain yields increased 65 per cent and his 

 potatoes 55 per cent in 10 years. His pre- 

 sent attitude toward recovery in product- 

 ivity of German soils is indicated by the 

 following excerpt from a recent number of 

 the Saturday Evening Post : 



"The third problem of Germany's fut- 

 ure food supply, the return to intensive 

 agriculture, will be solved bj- again mak- 



ing farming a business that pays. It is a 

 problem of fertilizers. With sufficient 

 fertilizers the area of land has no fixed 

 relation to its yield. By fertilization 

 Germany in a generation doubled her 

 wheat yield per area unit; and she can do it 

 again. In the early 80 's of the last century, 

 when she was importing annually 5( ),()()() 

 tons of Chile nitrates, she produced 17.8 

 bushels of wheat per acre. When by 1918 

 her nitrate impoits had risen to 747,000 

 tons, the yield had risen to 33.8 bushels per 

 acre. ' ' 



Certainly we need more livestock in 

 Canada. Certainly the livestock interests 

 should be paramount in sections wiiere 

 livestock can most profitably be produced. 

 The point is that if Canadian farmers are 

 to produce livestock in greater quantity, at 

 less cost per pound, they must have an in- 

 creased supply of better quality stock feed, 

 at a lower cost of production. Herein is 

 the necessity of increased fertility estab- 

 lished. In other words, Ontario, Quebec 

 and Maritime farmers must fertilize the 

 soil to increase its carrying capacity of 

 livestock. 



4. There may be certain farmers who 

 have successfully used fertilizers and have 

 obtained such results that they have con- 

 cluded that fertilizers ' are all-sufficient. 

 This belief is by no means in the best in- 

 terests of Canadian farming. Fertilizers 

 have their great and essential place in our 

 system* of agi-iculture, but they must be 

 considered in close relationship to proper 

 soil tillage, an intelligent use of lime, the 

 growth of legumes and seed selection, in 

 order to obtain the greatest improvement 

 of the crops themselves. 



5. Certain of our farm leaders are dis- 

 posed to advocate delay until more is 

 known about fertilizers and their use. This 

 may sound wise caution, but it is not the 

 type of attitude which means progress. In 

 competing with circumstances, such as 

 cited at the beginning of this article, it is 

 obvious that delay is fatal. Farm manage- 

 ment studies show that in Ontario a large 

 percentage of the farms, operated as they 

 are, produce an inferior labor income. 

 Better fa^m organization is undoubtedly 

 one of the great factors in improvement, 

 yet students of the subject have not he- 

 sitated to say that better methods of fer- 

 tility management must be introduced if 



