284 



SCIENCE. 



[N.S. Vol. XIX. No. 477. 



added to the soil through feeding stuffs 

 than by any other means. If fertilizing 

 material must be bought for the farm, it 

 can, under all ordinary conditions, be 

 bought in vastly cheaper form as feed 

 stuffs and utilized as such, and the residue 

 applied to the soil, than by purchasing fer- 

 tilizers outright. The very best of fer- 

 tilizers are often obtained in this way with- 

 out any direct outlay. The use of feed 

 stuffs, rich in fertility, may even return 

 a handsome profit as a separate proposi- 

 tion, and thus fertilizing constituents come 

 on to the farm under most advantageous 

 circumstances. The British and the Euro- 

 pean farmers buy large quantities of our 

 flaxseed and corn by-products. They 

 figure that they are the gainers even if they 

 do not make any profit on their feeding 

 operations with these products, and they 

 are. Until recently the packing house by- 

 products, including dried blood and tank- 

 age in various forms, have practically all 

 gone direct to the land as fertilizers. To- 

 day these products are serving a most im- 

 portant purpose as feed stuffs, and the time 

 is near at hand when practically every 

 pound of this material will first be utilized 

 as stock food, and later returned to the 

 soil. The returns are so much greater and 

 so much more economical in this way as to 

 put the purely commercial fertilizer farmer 

 out of business in the space of a few years 

 at the outside, where other conditions are 

 similar. 



It is true that fertilizers can not all be 

 bought in the form of stock foods. In 

 some cases it may not be practicable to 

 combine stock raising with the system of 

 agriculture being practised. These condi- 

 tions are the exception, however, and they 

 do not apply to the distinctive and most 

 productive agricultural regions of our 

 country. 



If the seven southern states that annually 

 expend $20,000,000 for commercial fer- 



tilizers, would stock their farms, feed their 

 cottonseed meal, instead of exporting it, 

 buy other feed stuffs rich in plant food, 

 rotate with the legumes and practise the 

 best known methods of cultivation in soil 

 tillage, they would in a short time be in- 

 dependent of the fertilizer dealers, and 

 save the vast expenditure which is now 

 such a drain upon the resources of that 

 section of country. 



The information, which has gone out re- 

 cently with scientific endorsement from 

 high authority, to the effect that soil fer- 

 tility may be maintained indefinitely with- 

 out resort to fertilizers of any kind, might 

 be viewed with grave alarm if it were to be 

 taken literally. Likewise the doctrine that 

 the deficiencies in soil constituents must be 

 determined by chemical analysis and sup- 

 plied by chemical fertilizers is equally per- 

 nicious. The manifest tendency in regions 

 where farmers rely upon commercial fer- 

 tilizers, like the tendency where men rely 

 on stimulants, is to use them to excess, and 

 when they are not necessary or profitable. 



Agricultural Economics: H. C. Taylor, 

 Universitj'' of "Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. 

 ' ' The modern farmer produces primarily 

 for the market. This is the chief charac- 

 teristic of modern commercial agriculture 

 as distinguished from the self-sufficing 

 agriculture of earlier times. * * * The 

 well-being of the modern farmer does not 

 depend, therefore, upon his capacity to 

 produce for himself the things which he 

 wishes to consume, but upon his capacity 

 to win profit in agricultural production. 

 To win the largest net return is then the 

 goal of modern commercial agriculture; 

 and if the economist wishes to make him- 

 self useful to the farmer he should under- 

 take, first of all, to solve this problem." 

 This principle was applied to the selection 

 of land, to the selection of crops for the 

 field system by groups of competing and 



