PART II 
BUILDING UP THE LAND 
CHAPTER V 
THE ROTATION oF Farm Crops 
The rotation of crops is one of the best established prin- 
ciples of modern agricultural science; also, one of the most 
important. 
It would seem that the early settlers on the rich virgin 
prairies of the Central West gave little or no thought to the 
possibility that the wonderful fertility of the land would ever 
be exhausted. Crop after crop of corn planted on the same 
fields for many seasons in succession did not, for a long time, 
diminish the yield. 
After fifteen or twenty years of such cultivation, the lands 
failed to respond as at first. Yields fell off and lands that 
formerly produced from sixty to seventy bushels of corn per 
acre dropped in yields to as low as twenty-five and thirty 
bushels per acre. Insects began to multiply in alarming num- 
bers and attacked crops. The land also became ‘‘corn sick’’ 
and in times of drouth, corn fired from lack of moisture. 
More progressive farmers began to see that the growing 
of corn year after year on the same land was a losing game, 
so short rotations of corn and oats were tried. These rota- 
tions, while giving increased yields for a time, were soon 
found to be lacking since the soil continued to grow less 
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