Ill 



LAND AND OTHER NATURAL AGENTS OF 

 AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION 



Introduction 



To estimate the area of our five continents and our many islands, 

 or to survey the surface of the United States, is to get but little infor- 

 mation about the land as a factor in the production of agricultural 

 goods. Fifty-seven million square miles this is little if anything more 

 than a mathematical declaration, the skeleton of an idea, which needs 

 be filled in by much critical analysis of quality. Obviously some of 

 this land yields no product, some yields a little (repaying the harvester 

 but not justifying tillage), other portions respond moderately to man's 

 labor, and a little gives bounteous return to husbandry. 



There are absolute frontiers of cold and drought and flood; 

 there are relative limitations of yield, due to too much as well as too 

 little heat, to either scarcity or overabundance of moisture. Nor is 

 the productiveness of land a consistent quality. Being subject to the 

 fickle changes of the weather, the product of a whole season may be 

 decimated by an unseasonable frost or a single devastating storm of 

 hail or wind, or greatly increased by an opportune rain or a fortnight 

 of favoring sunshine. 



Not only does fertility (whether due to chemical, physical, or 

 biological conditions) vary from region to region and even from acre 

 to acre, but "the original and indestructible powers of the soil" 

 fluctuate up and down with great rapidity, in response to good or 

 bad methods of farming. 



Finally, there is a frontier of rough or steep land, which stops the 

 farmer's progress not less than does the cold frontier or the dry fron- 

 tier. Just how far short of the perpendicular this limit shall fall we 

 are hardly prepared to say, but it is known that in extreme cases 

 agriculture may succeed in conquering slopes of as much as forty-five 

 degrees, and sheep and goats can glean some products from even 

 steeper hillsides. It is evident that the practical penalty which land 

 suffers as a result of roughness of topography appears in the form of 

 soil erosion, difficulty of tillage, and poor transportation facilities. 



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