FORTY-FIRST ANNUAL CONVENTION 43 



have abandoned such vast areas of land. You hear people say 

 that the land which is abandoned ought never to have been cul- 

 tivated in the first place. Those people don't know the situation. 

 There are millions of acres of this land that has just as fine- 

 topography as the common Illinois land, but yet it lies agricul- 

 turally abandoned in the eastern states. To be sure, some of it 

 ought never to have been put under cultivation, it is too broken, 

 but there are vast areas of good land of good topography that 

 was farmed for 1 50 to 200 years that is not farmed now because 

 it is not worth it. 



There are three materials that are needed for the improve- 

 ment and the maintenance of normal soils — ordinary farm land. 

 One is nitrogen, of course, which could be supplied in farm 

 manure, or by growing and turning under legume crops, pre- 

 ferably clover, beans, peas and crops of that character, but that 

 is only one of the important materials necessary for the main- 

 tenance or improvement of ordinary soils. Another is ground 

 limestone. Limestone is needed to correct the acidity which 

 gradually develops in soils. It is needed often to supply calcium, 

 an element of plant food contained in all limestone. Some land 

 is deficient in magnesium, which is in the common limestone of 

 northern Illinois. The northern Illinois limestone will correct 

 acidity and supply both calcium and magnesium. These are two 

 of the three materials that are needed. The third material is 

 phosphorus, an element of plant food rather hmited in most soils, 

 as compared with such an element as potassium or potash, which 

 exists in abundance in the crust of the earth. 



If you were to take two million pounds of a general aver- 

 age of the rocks of the earth, pulverize the material and spread 

 it out over an acre of land, it would be about 6 to 7 inches deep, 

 equal in quality to the plowed soil of an acre of land, and in 

 this you w^ould have 2,000 pounds of phosphorus and 50,000 

 pounds of potassium or 60,000 pounds of potash. That is a 

 fact which every farmer ought to have clearly in mind. That 

 would represent the average of the crust of the earth from which 

 soils are made. Then you w^ould have about 2,000 (pounds tof 

 phosphorus and 50,000 pounds of potassium if soils adhered at 

 all to that relationship. 



