63 CROP 
ROTATION 
your small area rest, so you must make up to 
the land by giving it plant food enough. 
In these days machinery has made so many 
wonderful changes in the management of crops 
that the farmer who sticks to the old farming 
customs has no chance of making more than a 
living. When the country was new, it was the 
practice to farm one section until it was ex- 
hausted, and then to move to fresh soil. The 
farmer was saved the bother of cultivating, as 
virgin soil needed practically only to be planted 
to bring forth a good harvest. But conditions 
have changed and the virgin soil left today is 
not important in the farming possibilities. 
Therefore, we have had to look for other means 
of getting crops and making every inch of land 
do its share. We no longer allow land to lie 
fallow that it may rest and renew itself. We 
renew it by fertilizing and by rotation of crops. 
Crop rotation is very valuable because it is a 
saving of fertilizer and labor, and keeps the soil 
in good condition. This has been proved by 
experiments made without manure, depending 
entirely upon rotation for fertilizing, which 
gave excellent results. 
There are probably a dozen or more good 
reasons for the value of crop rotation which 
have not yet been discovered and formulated, 
but the following are well known: 
