104 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



is not a section of all the corn growing belt where there is not much of this 

 waste, and where thousands of cattle could not be fed instead of the hundreds 

 that are fed. And even in the greatest corn growing sections of Ohio, Indi- 

 ana and Illinois, there are farmers who write to us asking for fertilizer 

 formulas for the restoration of the productiveness of their lands; while they 

 are annually wasting food that would turn them a profit in feeding, and give 

 manure for the acres that are hungry for it. Properly managed, there is no 

 part of the corn plant that cannot be profitably utilized as food for stock, 

 and the greatest leak today in American agriculture is in the waste of corn 

 stover all over the land. No farmer, no matter how fresh and fertile his 

 soil, can afford to plow corn stalks into his land, when, by proper treatment 

 that will largely increase the stock supporting capacity of his farm. While 

 commercial fertilizers are useful and even indispensable in these high pressure 

 days, no farmer can afford to neglect the manurial resources of the farm 

 itself, or waste what would give him profit if rightly handled and fed. 



THE ROTATION FOR THE COTTON FARM. 



In all the true cotton country, the sandy and level lands along the coast 

 and extending one or two hundred miles or more inland, and the widespread 

 prairie lands of Texas, cotton can be grown in an improving rotation as the 

 special money crop to the greatest advantage. In all the South Atlantic 

 coast country the use of commercial fertilizers in some way has become a ne- 

 cessity. The Texas cotton growers as yet may not feel the need of them, but 

 it is only a question of a few years when they will need them, unless a wiser 

 method of farming with cotton is adopted. The Experiment Stations in the 

 cotton country have spent a great deal of time and labor on the study of the 

 manurial requirements of the cotton crop, and far too little time on the dem- 

 onstration of the most economical methods of meeting these requirements. 

 Formulas without number have been devised for cotton and other crops, until 

 the farmer has been led to suppose that all he needs to grow the crop is a 

 formula for a fertilizer. While the investigations of the Stations have 

 demonstrated the needs of certain plants in the way of food, with great pre- 

 cision, there is now a great need for the demonstration of economical methods 

 for the bringing about of these conditions in the soil. While it has been 

 demonstrated that the cotton plant needs nitrogen, phosphoric acid and 

 potash in certain proportions, it by no means follows that these should be 

 purchased annually for the purpose, if by proper farming we can accumulate 

 any of them in the soil for the crop. The great need in all the cotton country, 

 the need that no purchase of fertilizers will ever fully meet, and without 



