372 DRY FARMING 



per acre every fourth year for the same len^h of time. 

 The most reliaTjle information that America affords shows 

 that corn in Illinois when grown continuously for 

 twenty-nine years produced twenty-seven bushels per 

 acre, while in a rotation of corn and oats it produced 

 forty-six bushels, and in a rotation of com, oats and 

 clover, fifty-eight bushels per acre. 



But we are not living either in England or in Illinois. 

 Their rotations d'o not suit the conditions found here. 

 Yet our rotations of the future must include, as do those 

 of older regions, a legume crop, an intertilled or fallow 

 crop and a money crop. Until recently in Western Can- 

 ada, neither legumes nor intertilled crops suitable for use 

 in a large way were available, or if so were either not 

 well suited to all conditions or did not lend themselves 

 satisfactorily to practicable changes in our present sys- 

 tem of farming. Some difficulties have yet to be sur- 

 mounted before paying crop rotations are discovered and 

 firmly established, but at least we are fast becoming 

 familiar with the crops we must depend upon not only as 

 nitrogen gatherers and as intertilled crops but also as 

 money crops. 



In the meantime the spread of weeds, the "drifting" 

 of soil and the loss of organic matter 'are in many places 

 lowering the profit from grain farming so materially that 

 resort to hay crops occasiona:lly is being practised. In 

 other places corn is coming to be a partial substitute fori 

 the fallow. It is possible that these crops, together with] 

 alfalfa, or some other legume such as sweet clover, mayj 

 be the stejiping stones to more desirable crop rotations, j 



335. Crop Rotations and Live Stock. — The introdiictionl 

 of a large acreage of forage crops on the farms of West-j 

 ern Canada will require an enormous initial outlay oil 



