440 MISCELLANEOUS FARM SUBJECTS 



soils of the East and South are rapidly depleted, while the rich 

 prairies and river bottoms maintain their fertility for a longer 

 period. 



Effects of One-Crop Farming. The continuous cotton and to- 

 bacco growing of the South and the wheat growing of the West are 

 even more exhaustive, since here the demands upon the soil are 

 not changed year after year the same crop is grown and the 

 same kind and proportion of constituents are required, while even 

 slighter returns are made in the way of manure than in the sys- 

 tem of farming just described. Under such conditions the decom- 

 position of the organic matter in the soil is accompanied by pro- 

 portionately greater losses of nitrogen. Moreover, the land is left 

 bare for a large part of the year, and its fertility is thereby still 

 further decreased. The crops become less abundant each year, not 

 because the soil is entirely exhausted, but because it is so far ex- 

 hausted of those constituents essential to the special crop grown that 

 its production is no longer profitable. 



Changed conditions of farming, which have an important bear- 

 ing on this point, are: (1) Increased cost of labor and lower prices 

 of many of the products of one-crop farming, and (2) an increas- 

 ing demand for market-garden products and fruit. For example, in 

 growing wheat, the labor of preparing the soil, of sowing, and of 

 harvesting is practically the same whether the yield is 10 bushels per 

 acre or 30 bushels, and the same is true of a number of other crops; 

 hence in case of the larger yield the cost of labor per bushel is ma- 

 terially reduced. Meager crops of a relatively low value can not 

 be produced profitably with high-priced labor. Soils of a high 

 degree of fertility are required in order to produce large yields of 

 these crops. The return to the soil of only the wastes of the farm 

 leads sooner or later to a decreased fertility, however good the man- 

 agement may be; hence the need of supplies of plant food from 

 sources outside the farm in order that maximum crops may be 

 produced. 



Market Gardening and Fruit Growing. It has been demon- 

 strated, in the case of market-garden crops, that even very fertile 

 soils contain too little available food to insure a maximum pro- 

 duction. This is especially true where rapidity of growth, earli- 

 ness, and high quality of produce are important factors. The areas 

 now necessarily devoted to these crops are so great that the amount 

 of farm manures available is much too small; besides, the consti- 

 tuents contained in such manures, being in part but slowly available, 

 are less useful than the more active forms contained in commer- 

 cial fertilizing materials. Market-garden crops are in a sense arti- 

 ficial crops, and, as a rule, need artificial supplies of plant food. 



Fruit culture, an industry of growing importance, is profitable, 

 particularly on the poorer soils near the eastern markets, largely in 

 proportion of the amounts of the mineral elements applied in excess 

 of those contained in soils otherwise well adapted to the crops. A 

 proper supply of food not only enables the trees to resist unfavorable 



