CHAPTER II 



Having roughly stated the common com- 

 mercial needs of agriculture and shown that 

 the cure lies with a social or State policy, 

 rather than with an individualistic one, I 

 now propose to run over some of the points 

 in scientific farming in order to inquire how 

 they bear upon this question. An immense 

 amount of labour has been bestowed upon 

 this subject during the last half-century. 

 So much is now known, indeed, that the 

 problem is not what to do, but when to 

 begin to do it. In fact, it would unquestion- 

 ably be impossible to find in any place or at 

 any time in the world's history a greater 

 accumulation of unapplied information than 

 exists at this moment in relation to all 

 the processes of agriculture. If we look at 

 the soil itself, we find that the details of the 

 treatment to be applied to any variety of it 



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