10 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



between urban and rural population increase. Which way this 

 increase will go depends much upon how this great agricultural 

 problem is handled. If we are to allow this great prospect to 

 be made a fad of by the theorist, if we are to stand idly by and 

 see the high ideals of agriculture brought down by those who 

 have no more than a passing interest in the business, the 

 recovery of the prestige which agriculture has attained will be 

 long and painful. No business is secure unless it is economically 

 sound. No business can long remain secure unless it can show 

 a balance on the profit side of the ledger. We may in agri- 

 culture transfer the crops from one section of the country to 

 another, and there, by the process of feeding to animals, 

 produce fertilizing elements to grow crops in this new section; 

 but every ton of such plant food shipped, and not replaced, 

 leaves the section from which the crop was shipped so much 

 poorer. We are doing just this in our country, and agriculture 

 founded on this basis cannot long endure. Our problem of 

 keeping up soil fertility and still feeding our ever-increasing 

 population, and, further, exporting large quantities of agri- 

 cultural products, is an enormous one. Few of us realize that 

 every pound of cotton, every beef animal, every bushel of wheat 

 that leaves our ports carries with it some store of American 

 soil fertility which will have to be replaced sometime. The 

 east has realized tiiis longer than the west, and has perhaps 

 profited to a greater extent by this transfer of soil fertility. 

 Western grain and hay has come east to feed our animals, 

 whose manure has in turn gone to enrich our fields, but now 

 that the west has come to realize what she has been doing, 

 undoubtedly she will retrench in this wholesale shipping of her 

 natural resources, and the east will in consequence have to 

 consider more seriously the question of raising more of her own 

 crops. Indeed, the problem is an ever-present one with us 

 now. Our farmers should grow more of the agricultural 

 products that are used here. Lands now undeveloped should 

 be brought into cultivation, and a section admirably adapted to 

 supporting a large population in prosperity should not be 

 marked by large areas of idle and unused land. This question 

 of developing idle lands has received great attention in the west 

 and south, so much so that in some places great companies 



