State Convention—Renovation of Soils. 
305 
RENOVATION OF SOILS BY ROTATION OF CROPS. 
BY A. A. BOYCE, LODI. 
As all soils are formed bv the admixture of the debris of rocks in 
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the shape of sand, gravel, or clay, with the remains of plants and 
animals, in the form of mould, their value or fertility depends, not 
only upon the proportions of those substances, but upon the nature 
and composition of the different kinds of sand, clay, gravel, and 
mould. The careful, observant farmer studies the nature and com¬ 
position of his soil, and adopts that system of cultivation that shall 
preserve or restore its fertility. The fertile lands of our State, when 
first brought under cultivation, produced abundant crops for a 
number of years. Wheat tlik most exhaustive of all the cereal 
grains has been grown on the same lands year after year, until the 
yield has been reduced from an average of twenty-five, to less than 
twelve bushels per acre, or below the cost of production. This 
exhaustive course of cultivation has been common to the western 
States, the necessities of the first settlers compelling them to grow 
wheat, that being the product most readily converted into money. 
Price of labor and value of products enter into the cost of pro¬ 
duction, and influence a rotation of crops. The cheapest and read¬ 
iest way to renovate our impovershed soils, is where red clover is 
made to form the principal or leading crop, with short rotations of 
grain-crops. By such a system a greater amount of plant-food will 
be left in the soil than was found there at the commencement of 
the rotation system, and each succeeding crop of clover will leave 
the land richer. That this is practicable on nearly all of the ex¬ 
hausted grain-lands of Wisconsin, admits of no doubt,and by this sys¬ 
tem the farmer can place his crops in market at a cost which will 
leave him a fair profit for labor and capital used in their produc¬ 
tion. 
It is said that among the modern nations, the people of Flanders 
(now Belgium) were the first to adopt a system of rotation of crops, 
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