CHAPTER IV. 



FARM CROPS. 



SECTION XVI. DIVERSIFICATION AND ROTATION 

 OF CROPS. 



By PROF. LYMAN CARRIER, 

 Department of Agronomy, Virginia Polytechnic Institute. 



One-Crop Farming Ruins Farms. One-crop farm- 

 ing has ruined more farms in America than any other 

 cause. The evil results from this practice are not con- 

 fined to any one locality or section. Continuous crop- 

 ping, year after year, with tobacco in Virginia, North 

 Carolina and Kentucky; with corn in Indiana, Illinois, 

 and Iowa; with wheat in Minnesota and the Dakotas; 

 and with cotton in the Gulf states, has in each instance 

 had the same effect, and that is soil depletion. The 

 instances just given are the ones most noticeable be- 

 cause the crops, with the partial exception of corn, are 

 all sold off the farm where they are grown. Usually 

 nothing is put back on the land to make up for the 

 fertility that is removed. This is practiced as long 

 as a crop can be grown at a profit. Then the farm is 

 either abandoned or the use of commercial fertilizers 

 begun. 



Fertility Must Be Restored to the Soil. Most of 

 the cultivated land in America was originally extremely 

 fertile, but at the present time run-down, worn-out 

 farms are altogether too common. There is no real 

 reason for the fertility of a soil to become exhausted. 

 There are farms in Denmark and Italy that have been 

 in cultivation for five or six hundred years at least, 



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