CHAPTER V 

 What Crops for Feeding 



The best system of agriculture is based upon 

 good crops and well-bred live stock. With these 

 to be possible the following propositions must be 

 always kept in mind. First, the soil must be rich 

 in the simple elements of plant food, that there 

 may be an abundance of farm crops. Second, the 

 farm crops must be adapted to climatic and soil 

 environments, so as to produce from the elements 

 in the soil the largest growth of desirable plant 

 products or animal food. Third, superior farm 

 stock must be raised in order to secure the cheap 

 production of high quality meat and milk or wool 

 and labor with the least expenditure of food. 



The farmer, to make agriculture remunerative, 

 must adapt himself to what falls within these three 

 lines. He must enrich the soil. He must aid 

 Nature in her efforts to change the unavailable plant 

 food into an assimilable form. Before the plant or 

 animal died it was unavailable for plant food. The 

 soil always holds locked-up food in its storehouse. 

 It is just like preserved fruit and vegetables. Our 

 wives take tomatoes, for instance, and after pre- 

 paring them, put them in the cans and seal them 

 up to prevent decay and decomposition. In the 

 same way our soils have been treated. We have 

 canned them up, so to speak, by taking out or- 

 ganic matter, by shallow plowing, and by careless- 

 ness in tillage, until these soils are hard and baked 

 and dead. The air no longer enters freely, and 



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