CHAPTER XX 



Alfalfa in Crop Rotation 



MAINTAINING FERTILITY 



It is a fundamental principle of the best agriculture 

 that every acre should be kept constantly at its highest 

 productive capacity. In one sense the farm is a great 

 machine for the production of food. All prosperity must 

 originate on and emanate from the farm ; the farmer is 

 really the only original producer. The measure of the 

 world's material success must be the relative amount of 

 the product of the farm. As lands decrease in fertility, 

 the cost of living increases in direct proportion. As fer- 

 tility decreases, land values decrease and rural popula- 

 tion decreases. Already there are districts in America 

 that are almost depopulated because of the barrenness of 

 what was, but a short while ago, fertile land. 



The fundamental principle of maintaining fertility is 

 to restore to the land annually those chemical elements 

 taken from it by the crops grown. A prominent importer 

 of horses relates that he was once entertained on a great 

 horse farm in France, whose owner told him that much 

 of the farm had been in cultivation for over eight hun- 

 dred years and was, he believed, as productive now as 

 ever in its history. 



Alfalfa ranks as the greatest fertilizing plant known 

 to scientific agriculture. All cereal crops use large quan- 



