OUR WORN SOILS 81 



this sea of waving corn a pleasing sight greeted 

 his eyes. The corn upon this particular field 

 stood out prominently above its kind, like the 

 sturdy, tall, broad shouldered man, in a crowd of 

 men. It was easy to see that it had been furnished 

 a fertility from the soil that its neighbor corn 

 growing on the same kind of soil had not received, 

 that had sent up its vigorous body above its fel- 

 lows, and when the husbandman gathered its pro- 

 duce it produced far in excess of any corn grow- 

 ing upon this prairie. This corn had gotten the 

 food that made it produce so strikingly and well 

 from the organic matter put into this soil by a rye 

 crop. 



If we who are engaged in the business of farm- 

 ing could only be impressed with the truth that a 

 worn or worn-out soil is a hungry soil; that a 

 hungry soil like a hungry man or a hungry beast 

 can not do normal work or give the best service 

 to its owner, we would feed our soils the food that 

 would enable them to bear the burden of crop 

 growing and the food we would feed them would 

 be the food nature designed for them organic 

 matter. 



In feeding our soils organic matter let us not 

 forget that the plowing under of the following 

 green crops equals tons of barnyard manure to 

 the acre as follows: 



Vetch, about forty tons. Rye, twenty tons. 

 Alfalfa, thirty tons. Clover, Cow Peas, Soy 

 Beans, and Canada Field Peas, about twenty tons, 

 thus making it easy for the farmer to get cheaply 

 an abundance of organic matter for his soils, and 

 thereby push up his soil to a wonderful fertility. 



