232 



SYSTEMS OF PERMANENT AGRICULTURE 



If we assume that three fourths of the produce harvested is used 

 for feed and one fourth for bedding, and that one third of the or- 

 ganic matter consumed by animals is recovered in the manure or 

 droppings, then the four-year rotation under live-stock farming 

 would add organic matter to the soil at the rate of i^ tons a year, 

 while the three-year rotation of corn, oats, and clover, under the 

 grain system, would add organic matter at the rate of if tons a 

 year. 



Thus, it will be seen that the grain system under a three-year 

 rotation of corn, oats, and clover, or of corn, wheat, and clover, or 

 under a four-year rotation of wheat (and clover), corn, oats (or 

 barley), and clover; or under a six-year rotation of corn, corn, 

 oats, clover, wheat, and clover, will maintain the nitrogen as well, 

 and the humus, or organic matter, somewhat better, than the live- 

 stock system under the four-year rotation of corn, corn, oats, and 

 clover, or under the five-year rotation of corn, corn, oats, clover, 

 and timothy, with all produce either harvested or pastured. 



Furthermore, the most uncertain feature in these methods is in 

 regard to saving the manure. The computations here given pro- 

 vide for practically no loss of solid or liquid excrement, for no loss 

 by fermentation or fire-fanging, which may occur even under 

 cover, and for no loss by leaching of manure exposed to the weather 

 in the open barnyard. It is common knowledge that a large part 

 of the value of manure is frequently lost before it is applied to the 

 land. 



The author has diligently inquired at many farmers' meetings 

 for several years for a man who had applied manure made from 

 crops grown on his own farm to all of the cultivated land on a 160- 

 acre farm, not to all during one year or during one rotation, but 

 even during all the time he had farmed the land. Very few men 

 have been found who could answer that all of their cultivated 

 land had been thus manured, not more than one in a thousand. 



In nearly all sections of the country a farmer can be found, here 

 and there, sometimes one in ten, and sometimes only one in a 

 hundred, who feeds all the crops he raises and also all that he 

 can buy at reasonably low prices from his neighbors, who supple- 

 ments all this with more or less purchased bran and shorts, oil 

 meal, cotton-seed meal, etc., and who is thus able to produce sufn- 



