22 NUT GROWING 



for the sudden emergence of nut culture. There are 

 several reasons for this unexpected event. 



1. Shortage of farm labor due to decreasing birth 

 rate and increase of movement toward urban life 

 came acutely to our attention in the early years of 

 1900. 



2. Nut trees produce more of the food essentials 

 in proteins, oils, and starches per acre than are fur- 

 nished by ordinary field crops. 



3. Nut crops require less labor and fewer hands 

 for cultivation or for harvesting the crop. The trees 

 may live and bear for more than a century, some- 

 times without apparent reduction of the fertility of 

 the soil in which they grow. Difficulties which 

 formerly stood in the way of successful propagation 

 of nut trees have been done away with to such an 

 extent that almost any boy or girl may do grafting 

 work of the sort which defeated expert horticultur- 

 ists two or three years ago. 



Nut cultivation belongs to what has been called 

 permanent agriculture. The meaning of the ex- 

 pression is clear. Transitory agriculture might be 

 the opposite term as applied to rotation of annual 

 plants. A tree does not exhaust the soil as a rule, 

 while transitory agriculture regularly exhausts the 

 soil unless fertilizers and methods of cultivation are 

 employed with a higher degree of intelligence than 

 is commonly in evidence. The profitable employ- 

 ment of fertilizers in crop rotation demands knowl- 

 edge of such high order that comparatively few 

 farmers are prepared to avail themselves of what is* 



