1908 



THE GOVERNORS' CONFERENCE 



323 



the richest land in tin- country has been 

 brought under cultivation. We should, 

 therefore, in the same time, have raised pro- 

 portionately the yield of our principal 

 crops per acre; because the yield of old 

 lands, if properly tn.-ated. tends to increase 

 rather than diminish. The year 1906 was 

 one of large crops and can scarcely be taKen 

 as a standard. \Ye produced, for example, 

 more corn that year than had ever been 

 grown in the United States in a single year 

 before. But the average yield per acre was 

 less than it was in 1872. \Ve are barely 

 keeping the acre product stationary. The 

 average wheat crop of the country now 

 ranges from twelve and one-half, in ordin- 

 ary years, to fifteen bushels per acre in the 

 best seasons. And so it is on down the 

 line. 



But the fact of soil waste becomes start- 

 lingly evident when we examine the record 

 of some states where single cropping and 

 other agricultural abuses have been preval- 

 ent. Take the case of wheat, the mainstay 

 of single-crop abuse. Many of us can re- 

 member when New York was the great 

 wheat-producing state of the Union. The 

 average yield of wheat per acre in New 

 York for the las ten years was about eigh- 

 teen bushels. For the first five years of that 

 ten-year period it was 18.4 bushels, and for 

 the last five 17.4 bushels. In the farther 

 West, Kansas takes high rank as a wheat 

 producer. Its average yield per acre for the 

 last ten years was 14.16 bushels. For the 

 first five years it was 15.14 and for the last 

 five 13.18. Up in the Northwest, Minnesota 

 wheat has made a name all over the world. 

 Her average yield per acre for the same 

 ten years was 12.96 bushels. For the first 

 five years it was 13.12 and for the last 

 five 12.8. \Ve perceive here the working of 

 a uniform law, independent of location, soil 

 or climate. It is the law of a diminishing 

 return due to soil destruction. Apply this 

 to the country at large, and it reduces agri- 

 culture to the condition of a bank whose 

 depositors are steadily drawing out more 

 money than they put in. 



What is true in this instance is true of 

 our agriculture as a whole. In no other 

 important country in the world, with the 

 exception of Ru^ia. is the industry that 

 must be the foundation of every state, at so 

 low an ebb as in ur own. According to 

 the last census th' ;ge annual product 



per acre of the farms of the whole United 

 States was worth $11.38. It is little more 

 than a respectable rental in communities 

 where the soil is properly cared for and 

 made to give a reasonable return for culti- 

 vation. There were but two states in the 

 Union whose total value f farm pro,] 

 was over $30 per .f impr"\,-d land. 



The great state of Illinois gave but $12.4*. 

 and Minnesota showed only $8.74. X" <]\<- 

 crimination attaches to these figures, where 

 all are so much at fault. Nature has given 

 to us the most valuable possession ever 



committed to man. It can i dupli- 



cated, b 



face of the earth. And we are rackr 

 impoverishing it exactly as 

 the forests and rilling the mine-.. (> 

 once the envy .if every other country, I 

 attraction which draws millions of immi- 

 grants across the seas, gave an a 

 yield for the whole United Stal 

 ten years beginning with iS<y> nf 13.5 hu-h- 

 els of wheat per acre. Austria and llun- 

 garv each produced over seventeen hu-1 

 per acre, France 19.8, Germany 27.6 and the 

 United Kingdom 32.2 bushels per acre. 

 bor the same decade .mr average yield 

 oats was less than thirty bushels, while- 

 Germany produced forty-six and Great 

 Britain forty-two. For barley the tigi; 

 are twenty-five against thirty-three and 

 34.6; for rye 15.4 against twenty- four 

 Germany and twenty-six for Ireland. In 

 the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Nether- 

 lands and Denmark a yield of more than 

 thirty bushels of wheat per acre has been 

 the average for the past five years. 



Our agricultural lands have been abused 

 in two practical ways; first by single 

 cropping, and second by neglecting fer- 

 tilization. It is fortunate for us that na- 

 ture is slow to anger, and that we may 

 arrest the consequence of this ruinous 

 policy before it is too late. In all parts 

 of the United States the system of tillage 

 has been to select the crop which would 

 bring in the most money at the current mar- 

 ket rate, to plant that year after year, and to 

 move on to virgin fields as soon as the old 

 farm rebelled by lowering the quality and 

 quantity of its return. It is still the 

 practice; although diversification of in- 

 dustry and the rotation of crops have 

 been urged for nearly a century and 

 are today taught in every agricultural 

 college in this country. The demonstra- 

 tion of the evils of single cropping is 

 mathematical in its completeness. At 

 the experiment station of the Agricul- 

 tural College of the University of Min- 

 nesota they have maintained 44 experi- 

 mental plots of ground, adjoinii 

 another, and as nearly identical in soil, 

 cultivation and hand- 



ling can make them. < >n these have 

 been tried and compared different meth- 

 ods of crop rotation and fertili/ation, to- 



'her with systems o; 

 The results of ten \ 

 are now available. On a tract of g. 



.mid sown "titinuously for irs 



wheat, the i per a 



the first five y jo jj bushels 



and for the next five i'> 02 buhels. 



Where corn wa- n continuously on 



one plot while on the p' -id'c it 



planted b-- m five years 



in a verage 



Id of the latter for the tw 

 under corn per acre. 



The plot where corn was grown gave 



