80 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



oats. He has provided enough nitrogen in the atmosphere for 

 the growing of maximum crops every year on every acre of the 

 land area of the world for 3,600,000 years. Then we have been 

 provided with thinking power, a reasoning power such that if 

 we only exercise it we can put together these elements. The 

 tiling for us to do is to use the things that nature has put 'nefore 

 us, and simply exercise a little more our gray matter than we 

 have in the past, and when we have done that, we have done a 

 great thing for the agriculture of the country. 



We wonder why alfalfa does not grow better than it does. 

 Why, people, the surprising thing is that it does as well a.; it 

 does. You will remember I said that this plant naturally grows 

 in sweet soil and we attempt to bring it into a soil saturated with 

 water and so acid that it takes 2 to 4 tons of limestone per acre 

 to overcome it. We attempt to grow it in an atmosphere nearly 

 saturated and then wonder why it does not do better than it 

 does. If you will grow this plant under the conditions that it 

 grows in in its native home, you will grow it successfully. I 

 talked with a man only yesterday who wanted to know what the 

 trouble with his alfalfa was. I asked him several questions. He 

 did not sweeten nor inoculate his. soil and if I had gone further 

 he would doubtless have said that he did not drain it either. 



If we grow alfalfa crops as successfully as they should be 

 grown, we should have our soil free from acid and from weeds, 

 following a cultivated crop with alfalfa. Alfalfa is no fighter, 

 it will not encroach upon weeds; weeds will crowd it out very 

 readily, so I am giving you some of the things necessary for its 

 greatest success. The University of Illinois with all facilities at 

 its command for growing alfalfa, on the field in Adams county 

 kept the weeds down, then limed the soil, then prepared a seed 

 bed that w^as practically ideal ; they put rock phosphate there, 

 they supplied seed well inoculated and did not get anything, but 

 the man, after he had done this work for the Experiment Sta- 

 tion, went on his own farm where he plowed up his ground ; did 

 not do a good job; did not put in any lime or rock phosphate, and 

 he has a wonderful growth of alfalfa, and when I was on thai- 

 field with other men, there was a man there who was saying that 

 the University of Illinois was practicing methods whcih were 

 unnecessary and were failing where the other man was success- 



