34 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



the farmer to carry on his business at a profit and the ultimate 

 end of which must be an abandonment of the farm. 



As the trend of population has moved westward, so has the 

 use of commercial fertilizers followed it. Farmers were seem- 

 ingly not aware of the fact that the soil was a living thing and 

 would starve if it were insufficiently or improperly fed, that it 

 must receive some nourishment if it was to do the work that it} 

 was intended for. The length of time the soil could continue 

 to produce profitable crops under this grain farming system of 

 management, or mismanagement, would simply depend upon 

 the original amount of plant food that the soil contained and 

 the rapidity with which it was moved. They did not reaHze that 

 the amount of fertility in the soil was a fixed item and that byj 

 continually taking away without replacing must eventually end 

 in a soil almost devoid of plant food. Fortunately for us a com- 

 paratively large area of this country was blessed with a large 

 amount of natural fertility, as is evidenced by the large yields 

 of grain that have been continually taken from the soil without 

 returning anything in the way of plant food and without i^ 

 showing a decrease in fertility. Improved methods of tillage, 

 rotation of crops, and better seed have simply enabled the farmer 

 to increase the rapidity with which he depleted his soil and 

 brought him nearer to the time when his soil would cease to yield 

 profitable return for his labor. The efficiency of the farmer was 

 often judged by the amount of plant food that he could rob from 

 an acre of land and haul to the elevator in the form of grain. 

 The better the farmer the more his soil suffered. Farms were 

 worked like gravel pits are worked, and there was about as much 

 sentiment and pride in the business. When the supply of gravel 

 was exhausted or decreased to a point where it no longer paid 

 to work it, he left it — a scar on the landscape — and moved on to 

 "new diggin's." He worked his land to a finish. The minimum 

 amount of buildings, machinery and other equipment was re- 

 quired to carry on this system of farming. It was wasteful to 

 the extreme. Cornstalks and straw stacks were burned, as it 

 was easier to do this than to get them out of the way in an}^ 

 other manner. Even after the best land began to be robbed of 



