FORTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION 199 



but all you have to do is to study the facts as presented to you 

 and you cannot help but feel that over large areas in this state 

 nitrogen is wanting in our soils. It is as free as the water, the 

 only thing for us to do to get it into the soil is to use limestone, 

 sweeten it and inoculate the soil for legume crops and turn 

 as much as possible under. I have some charts, one of which 

 shows what I want to demonstrate. Upon the yellow silt loam 

 of southern Illinois, some experiments were conducted at the 

 University, and the yields without treatment were as follows : 

 7.05 bushels per acre per year of wheat; 13.5 bushels of oats 

 per acre, but when nitrogen was added there the wheat yielded 

 85.93 bushels, or an increase of 78.88 bushels. I don't expect 

 on a farm that you will get any such increase. You see the 

 temperature conditions were kept constant, not varying more 

 than 10 degrees, and the moisture conditions were kept ideal. 

 The increase in the oats crop was 99.08 bushels due to the addi- 

 tion of nitrogen. Now right beside this I would like to con- 

 trast the crops upon a soil that was taken in LaSalle county, 

 rich in nitrogen, manure had been kept upon the farm. The 

 surrounding farms had been depleted of their fertility in order 

 that this farm might be made more productive, and upon the 

 soil of this farm, taken to the University of Illinois, spring 

 wheat without treatment of the soil gave a yield of 34.2 bushels 

 and in every case where nitrogen was applied there was a 

 considerable increase, showing that nitrogen, even in this type 

 of soil, is the element needed. 



Suppose on the average farm, with that treatment, you 

 would get one-fourth the increase gotten out of this culture 

 work, at the present price of wheat it would pay immense re- 

 turns. When you have gotten more nitrogen into the soil, more 

 organic matter, you will want along with that other element 

 which it is necessary for us to purchase, and that is phosphorous, 

 because under present normal conditions it is made available 

 at the rate of 12 pounds per acre per year and in order to grow 

 a 100 bushel crop of corn you will need 23 pounds of phos- 

 phorous, and it is absolutely impossible to grow that corn with- 

 out it. This will be liberated by the rapid decomposition of 

 your organic matter, but remember — you cannot grow the 

 largest crops of legumes to turn under in order to make avail- 



