Maintain the: Fertility of Our Soits. 
7 
$81,180 for the crop, a trifle over one dollar per ton. In other 
words, had the farmers of this immediate neighborhood who sold 
their sugar beets to the local factory, been compelled to pay the 
market prices for the potash, phosphoric acid and nitrogen removed 
from their lands by the beet roots taken to the factory, it would 
have cost them $81,180. 
These examples serve thoroughly well to emphasize the fact 
that there are other items of cost in raising a crop, even of alfalfa, 
than those previously mentioned, i. e., land rent, labor, etc., and to 
show that the cost in the diminished fertility of the soil may be a 
very important item. 
Our farmers can no longer afford to treat this subject with in¬ 
difference or utter neglect, as they have done in years past, and as 
they do to a considerable extent even at the present time. We have 
shown that the soils are by no means inexhaustibly rich; even our 
virgin soils are not. In fact, none of them are more than moder¬ 
ately rich in the essential elements of plant food. 
climate: and fertility. 
Our climate does not seem to be especially favorable to the 
formation of that form of organic matter known as humus, which 
favors the retention of nitrogen until it can be converted into a form 
fitted for its taking up and assimilation by the plant. The mod¬ 
erate supply of plant food, our climatic conditions which favor the 
complete destruction, the burning up of the organic matter in the 
soil rather than its humifaction, and every other condition which 
tends to lessen the fertility of our soils, admonishes us to vigilance 
in the preservation and enhancement by every means within our 
power of the intrinsic value of our lands, which is their power to 
produce. 
This view is supported by the experience of ranchmen or farm¬ 
ers throughout Colorado, and while it is in perfect agreement with 
the theoretical views held regarding the fertility of the soil and its 
durability, it is simply a plain matter of fact not fully appreciated 
as yet, but one which is coming to be more and more generally ac¬ 
knowledged, even by the most careless and indifferent. 
The necessity of carefully considering this question cannot be 
too strongly urged upon all classes of our agricultural population. 
This will undoubtedly seem a self-evident fact, even a trite one, to 
many persons, but a very little observation of the practices of our 
farmers will convince any one that it cannot be repeated too often. 
CAN WE PROFITABLY REPLACE THE PLANT FOOD REMOVED? 
There is a very important question confronting us, i. e., can we, 
by any available means, restore the plant food removed by our crops, 
sugar beets, for instance, at such a cost as will permit us to make a 
