PRINCIPLES OF PERMANENT AGRICULTURE 25 



advised for maintaining soil fertility, there has been 

 a definite and well-established connection between 

 live stock and soil maintenance. Dr. E. H. Jenkins 

 of the Connecticut experiment station, after having 

 spent a lifetime in the investigation of soil problems 

 and fertilizers, said that the only recommendation he 

 could make, with confidence, was that barnyard 

 manure is good to put upon land. While it is not to 

 be argued that a permanent agriculture is not pos- 

 sible without live stock, it is true that much of the 

 best agriculture of western Europe includes the 

 keeping of a large number of animals, and it is 

 equally true that some of the most poverty-stricken 

 countries in the world, with the poorest types of 

 agriculture, keep relatively few farm animals. Rus- 

 sia, with all her vast agricultural domain, has very 

 few meat or milk-producing animals and her agri- 

 culture today does not include, to any particular 

 extent, the application of manure to the land. All 

 of her agricultural poverty cannot be attributed to 

 this fact, for the plowing is poorly done with very 

 crude implements, but her wheat yield of only 

 8^2 bushels per acre can in a large part be at- 

 tributed to this lack of live stock or of anything to 

 take its place in maintaining fertility. Fallowing 

 is practiced, but it alone has not been found suf- 

 ficient. Although the agriculture of India includes 

 the keeping of large numbers of animals, there is 

 little or no relation between this live stock and the 

 soil, for the reason that the people are driven in 

 their poverty to using the dried manure of the 

 animals for fuel, and, therefore, little or none of it 

 is ever returned to the soil. 



The abandoned lands of the United States all lie 

 in regions where stock raising either never was a 

 dominating feature or where the value of manure 



