SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE NEEDS FARM ANIMALS 45 



tice resulted from the inroads of the cotton boll- 

 weevil, against which no method of combat was 

 known, except by changing the crop. Whatever the 

 cause, it has developed in the minds of the leaders 

 in southern agriculture the idea that the basic 

 trouble lies in the one-crop system and the realiza- 

 tion that the remedy for the South's agricultural 

 ills is the establishment of a diversified system of 

 farming, which shall include the extensive grow- 

 ing of leguminous crops, the feeding of large num- 

 bers of farm animals, and the return to the soil of 

 the plant food and humus this produces, for build- 

 ing up the soil to its original condition of pro- 

 ductiveness. 



A few years ago when the soil of a sloping field 

 had been so robbed of its humus that the heavy 

 rains began to wash enormous gullies through the 

 hillsides and carry away into the streams all the top 

 soil which the system of soil robbing had left, the 

 remedy was to build terraces at intervals at right 

 angles to the slope in order to arrest this removal 

 of the soil by floods. The new Southern agricul- 

 ture of today knows that the real remedy for this 

 condition lies in planting that sloping field to clover 

 or alfalfa or cowpeas or some other of the many 

 rank growing forage crops which readily grow in 

 such abundance throughout the whole South. The 

 heavy vegetation thus produced effectually stops 

 the action of flood waters. The busy soil microbes, 

 working at the roots of the legumes, collect great 

 stores of nitrogen from the air and add it to the 

 soil's producing power, and when after a few years 

 the farmer plows under this heavy growth, it adds 

 great stores of humus, and marks a long step in 

 bringing the field back to its original rich condi- 

 tion. 



