20 PROFITABLE STOCK RAISING 



SUCCESSFUL CONTINUOUS AGRICULTURE 



Western Europe, as a whole, offers very good 

 examples of continued high production upon lands 

 that have been cultivated for more than a thousand 

 years. The farmers of this region were compelled, 

 generations ago, to face the question of soil main- 

 tenance, and they have gradually developed sys- 

 tems of agriculture which seem to be permanent 

 and which, in general, are in accordance with well- 

 known principles of agricultural science. The 

 United States is the newest of the world's agricul- 

 tural regions, yet it, too, has encountered the prob- 

 lems arising from depleted soils and the consequent 

 lowering of crop production below the limits of 

 profitable farming. Even in our new land, which 

 was virgin soil when many of the still productive 

 European fields had been tilled thousands of years, 

 we have our large areas of abandoned land which 

 was once highly productive, but which was man- 

 aged in an unintelligent manner until the remain- 

 ing fertility was no longer sufficient to produce crops 

 which would pay for the cost of production. The old 

 fields of the south were abandoned because they 

 would no longer produce tobacco and cotton in 

 sufficient quantities to pay the planter for his labor. 

 New England and the north Atlantic states have 

 thousands of farms which have been abandoned 

 and which were deserted because of decreased pro- 

 duction and because of the unlimited amount of 

 rich lands in the West. In Maryland and Virginia 

 today land can be purchased within 20 miles of the 

 national capitol for from $1.50 to $15 per acre, 

 which 100 years ago composed the rich tobacco 

 plantations of this country, yet these farms were 

 deserted, or practically so, because they could no 



