Intensive Farming 



Abnormal 



Crops 



Require 



Special 



Feeding 



Barren 

 Heath 

 Made 

 Fruitful 



Progressive farmers and market gardeners are carrying on 

 ''intensive agriculture." They produce abnormal crops and there- 

 fore require intensive methods of cultivation and feeding. A 

 potato plant left to itself and in the state of nature produces 

 potato balls. Man, by modern methods of cultivation and selection 

 of seed, has changed the nature of the plant to produce tubers. 

 A cabbage left to itself would run to a seed stalk, but we cul- 

 tivate it for its head alone, which is an aggregation of leaves 

 that are very palatable as a food for man, but quite exhaustive 

 of the soil. As we have changed the nature of most of our 

 cultivated crops, so we must change our methods of cultiva- 

 tion and especially our methods of feeding them. The old 

 method of relying wholly on stable manure, raw or composted 

 — waiting on the slow processes of nature to render it available — 

 must give way to quicker and surer methods for the commercial 

 farmer and gardener of today. 



What They Are Doing in Europe 



"About the middle of the last century a lighthouse, known 

 as Dunston Pillar, was built on Lincoln Heath, -in Lincolnshire, 

 England. It was erected to guide travelers over a trackless, 

 barren waste, a very desert, almost in the heart of England, 

 and long it served its useful purpose. The pillar, no longer a 

 lighthouse, now stands in the midst of a rich and fertile farm- 

 ing region, where all the land is in high cultivation. For many 

 years, no barren heath has been visible even from its top." 

 Such is the story told by the veteran agricultural chemist, the late 

 Professor Johnson, of Connecticut, to which the late Professor 

 Atwater adds: "Had not chemists busied themselves to find out 

 what makes plants grow, and had practical farmers not been 

 ready to use their discoveries, Lincoln Heath would still 

 remain a waste. What is true of this bit of English soil is true 

 in greater or less degree of wide areas of our own and other 

 lands." 



Prince Kropotkin of France, a Russian exile, in an article 

 on "The Coming Reign of Plenty," writes: 



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