Natural Fertility of the Soil 17 



Irrational farm practice. 



There are methods of practice which are entirely irra- 

 tional, and contribute to the real losses of fertility. Farm- 

 ing is unprofitable, not altogether because the land is 

 exhausted, but because only those crops are grown which 

 possess a high fertility value, and which have a low market 

 price, and thus the prices received for the constituents 

 in the crop are actually less than they cost in land and 

 in labor ; and these methods of practice are not confined 

 to farmers whose lands of inexhaustible fertility have 

 been given them by a generous government, but are fol- 

 lowed by farmers who annually purchase commercial fer- 

 tilizers to supply the losses of fertility thus sustained. 



Where the conditions are such as to make it imprac- 

 ticable to grow and sell crops, as such, of a low fertility 

 value, the producer should endeavor to sell the manu- 

 factured rather than raw materials, that is, to so use 

 his crude products as to lower the quantity of the con- 

 stituents contained in those sold, which explains, in part, 

 the greater success in the long run of a mixed husbandry, 

 rather than single-crop farming. 



The artificial losses of our national capital stock of 

 fertility are, however, not absolute, if the products are 

 consumed in our own country, as more or less of the con- 

 stituents contained in the crude products sold find their 

 way back to the farm, either in the by-products of the 

 mills, in sewage, in the manure from cities, or in various 

 vegetable or animal wastes ; but when they are exported, 

 the loss is absolute, and the amounts so disposed of are in 

 some degree a measure of the rate of loss of the capital 

 stock of fertility in our lands, though to these must be 

 added the losses due to the improper use of manure and 

 other waste materials. 



