Crop failure

“ Such an equilibrium, could it once be established, would possibly continue for long periods of time, but in the end would no doubt lead to disaster; for, unless the very cornerstone of modern agricultural science is unsound, there will be ultimately a diminution of crop producing power if continuous cropping is practiced without returning to the soil a goodly portion of the elements of soil fertility taken from it. The real purpose of modern agricultural researeh is to maintain or increase the productivity of our lands; if this cannot be done, modern agriculture is essentially a failure. ”

“ If the farmer could see his way clear to cut down the quantity of seed wheat or oats used on a fertile soil, the catch of grass would be better, but the small-grain crop is not very profitable at the best, and the owner does not like deliberately to limit it.
A greater amount of failure is due to an inadequate supply of fertility. The grass does not suffer so much from over-shading as it does from starvation, both during the growth of the grain and after harvest. The stronger grain plants appropriate the scanty stock of available fertility, and leave the grass and clover nearly helpless. ”

“ Were it not that the water film held closely around the soil particles is possessed of extreme mobility, it would not be possible to meet the demands of the plants upon the water at comparatively great distances. Even as it is, it frequently happens that when crops are planted too thickly on dry-farms, the soil-moisture cannot move quickly enough to the absorbing roots to maintain plant growth, and crop failure results. ”

“ They seem to think that the land contains an inexhaustible supply of plant food. Another cause is the failure of the farmer to rotate his crop. There are farms being cultivated in the South today where the same piece of land has been planted in cotton every year for forty or fifty years. Forty years ago, this same land would yield from one bale to one and a half per acre. And today it will take from four to six acres to produce one bale.
Still another cause for the deterioration of the soil is erosion. There is no effort put forth on the tenant's part to prevent his farm from washing away. ”

“ New England, they are neither seriously diseased nor dried up, we find at harvest-time that the promise has belied the fulfillment; that, after all the fine show above ground, the season has been too wet, and the crop is light. We frequently hear complaint that the season was too cold for Indian corn, and that the ears did not fill; or that a sharp drought, following a wet Spring, has cut short the crop. We hear no man say, that he lacked skill to cultivate his crop. Seldom does a farmer attribute his failure to the poverty of his soil. ”

“ But when the soil really is good at that depth, we cannot get at it so as to turn it to practical account. The thin stratum of artificial manure which is sown is no more in comparison than a single shower after a drought of months; yet to sow too much would destroy the effect. No blame, then, falls upon the agriculturist, who is only too anxious to get a larger produce. It is useless charging him with incompetency. What countless experiments have been tried to increase the crop: to see if some new system cannot be introduced! With all its progress, how little real advance has agriculture made! ”

“ We must not put all our time into one crop unless we are rich enough to do our own insurance; for drought, or damp; or accident, ill-adapted seed, or general unfavorable conditions may make failures of one or more crops. But in variety and succession of crops is safety and profit. In order to succeed, crop must be made to follow crop, so that the ground is used to its full capacity. To leave it fallow for even a week is to invite weeds and to lose much of the advantage of tillage, as well as so much time. ”

“ If continued soil depletion is practiced, ultimate failure is the only future for such investments.
That vast areas of land once cultivated with profit in the original thirteen states now lie agriculturally abandoned is common knowledge; and that the farm lands of the great Corn Belt and Wheat Belt of the North-Central states are even now undergoing the most rapid soil depletion ever witnessed is known to all who possess the facts. ”

“ When by correct soil culture the individual soil grains are thus grouped into large clusters, the soil is said to be in good tilth. Anything that tends to destroy these complex soil grains, as, for instance, plowing the soil when it is too wet, weakens the crop-producing power of the soil. ”

“ As plants the cereals are weaklings. They must be coddled and weeded. For their reception the ground must be plowed and harrowed, and sometimes it must be cultivated after the crop is planted. This must be done for every harvest. When we produce these crops upon hilly land, the necessary breaking up of the soil prepares the land for ruin—first the plow, then rain, then erosion. Finally the desert.
CAN WE GET ECONOMICS INTO BOTANY?
Must we continue to depend primarily upon the type of agriculture handed to us by primitive woman? It is true that we have improved the old type. ”

“ The ground must be hurriedly, and imperfectly prepared, and the seed is put in too late, often to rot in the over-soaked soil, requiring the field to be planted again at a time which makes it extremely doubtful whether the crop will ripen before the frost destroys it.
The necessary summer cultivation, between the rows, has to be done as the weather permits; and much more of it is required because of the baking of the ground. The whole life of the farmer, in fact, becomes a constant struggle with nature, and he fights always at a disadvantage. ”

“ But with the growth of population and the continued demand for land no soils of that class have been available for the last generation or so, and latterly we find the problem has been how to make use of the arid lands, either by irrigation or by dry-farming where the rainfall can still be made adequate for partial cropping, or, further, how to convert the soils that are absolutely poisoned by alkali salts into something capable of growing a crop. ”

“ The portion of the farm reduced in productive power for the moment goes to grass, while the labor and fertilizers are concentrated upon the fields that are broken for grain and vegetables. The removal of all the crop at harvest, and probably the pasturing of after-math, are the only matters of interest that the fields, depleted by cultivation and seeded down to grass, have for the owner until the poor hay yield and the need of a sod for corn draw attention again to them. ”

“ The effects of drought are, of course, sometimes manifested on soils which do not require draining,—such as those poor gravels, which, from sheer poverty, do not enable plants to form vigorous and penetrating roots; but any soil of ordinary richness, which contains a fair amount of clay, will withstand even a severe drought, without great injury to its crop, if it is thoroughly drained, and is kept loose at its surface.
Poor crops are, when the cultivation of the soil is reasonably good, caused either by inherent poverty of the land, or by too great moisture during the season of early growth. ”

“ The history of agriculture and our knowledge of science agree in teaching that the causes of diminished productiveness that are often noticed and referred to as indications of soil-exhaustion, can not be exclusively attributed to the loss of constituents removed from the soil in the crops sold from the farm, but rather to the failure to conserve the available elements of fertility, and keep them in active circulation, by a judicious system of cropping and soil management. ”

“ If the supply of any one of these plant food elements is limited, the crop yield will also be limited. The grain and grass crops, such as corn, oats, wheat, and timothy, also the root crops and potatoes, secure two elements from the air, one from water, and seven from the soil.
"The supply of some elements is constantly renewed by natural processes, and iron, one of the ten, is contained in all normal soils in absolutely inexhaustible amount; while other elements become deficient and the supply must be renewed by man, or crop yields decrease and farming becomes unprofitable. ”

“ Substantial losses have been incurred in the production of sunflower seeds through inexpert use of fertilizers and insecticides, inadequate thinning and weeding, improper crop rotation, and poor harvesting methods. The basic underlying cause of these difficulties is the widespread lack of familiarity with modern production methods and the inadequate supply of technically trained personnel to guide farmers. ”

“ The truth is, that deficiency of crops on apparently dry land is frequently attributed to unskilful husbandry, when it really arises from the baleful influence of concealed stagnant water; and the want of skill is shown, not so much in the management of the arable culture of the land, as in neglecting to remove the true cause of the deficiency of the crop, namely, the concealed stagnant water. ”

“ The soil is in all parts naturally fertile, but the farmer sometimes has great difficulty in reducing it to a proper state for cultivation, owing to the roots and growth which must be exterminated before the seed is sown. The strongest ploughs and the most careful harrowing are required for this work, otherwise the settler will have to face the annoyance and delay of broken ploughshares, and the disaster of a crop choked by tangle-grass and weeds. ”

“ Since the clay workers can be kept out it seems worth while to destroy all traces of them and have the wall white and fair once more. As the work progresses and the air of desolation is subdued my spirits rise, and I wonder how I have stood it so long. It is well there is something to cheer my spirits, for the financial outlook is appalling.
The storm-tossed crop is hopeless, the corn all damaged; in the little that there is, not a perfect ear. ”

“ They are "strong" and fertile,—and should be able to absorb, and to prepare for the use of plants, the manure which is applied to them, and the fertilizing matters which are brought to them by each storm;—but they cannot properly exercise the functions of fertile soils, for the reason that they are strangled with water, chilled by evaporation, or baked to almost brick-like hardness, during nearly the whole period of the growth and ripening of the crop. ”

“ I usually succeeded in gathering them on the hundred per cent basis.
I am interested in this subject today because of an innate love of trees and because the development of a tree crop agriculture offers a way to stop soil erosion. To me the worst of all economic sins is the destruction of resources, and the worst of all resource destructions is the destruction of the soil, our one great and ultimate resource. "After man the desert" has been truly said too often of many old lands.
Soil cover is after all about the only thing that man has as a basis for the support of his life on earth. ”

“ For in the tremendous conflagration that ensues, much of the accumulated wealth of ages is destroyed; and I may remind the reader that an iron peg driven firmly down till its head was level with the ground of a newly-cleared piece of forest, was found to be projecting no less than six inches from the surface after the fire was over. Then a crop is sown which indeed is not an exhaustive one, but it must be remembered that the land is exposed to heavy tropical rains, and perhaps for two years, after which it is abandoned, and allowed to grow up again into forest. ”

“ In the light of these experiments the generally accepted theories of soil-exhaustion must be reconstructed, and the action and relative value of manures must be investigated from a new stand-point.
The exhaustion of a soil can no longer be estimated by the constituents removed in the crop, Wheat and oats, with other cereals, are generally considered as exhausting crops, and a summer fallow is looked upon as a means of increasing or restoring the fertility of the soil ”

“ When crops are removed from the land year after year, without any return being made, it naturally follows that under ordinary conditions the amount of available plant-food is diminished, with a strong probability of a corresponding diminution in crop-producing power. ”

“ Last year's poor crop - the smallest since the early 1950s - reflects both increased idle land on state-controlled farms and extreme pessimism among many remaining private farmers, who failed even to plant wheat. ”

“ If from any cause there is a check to the crop during its growth which prevents the grain from being hard, but in milky condition, the destruction of such fields is complete, it not paying to cut and bring the rice out of the field.... ”

“ If sown much earlier in such districts, the growth is likely to be too rank and subject to dangerous injury by frosts, and as suggested by Farrell the very large development of the root system in the fall may cause, the following summer, a dangerously large growth of foliage; that is, the crop may run to straw at the expense of the grain. ”

“ The objection made to the deep-working implements, like the plow, is that they injure the crop by cutting its feeding roots, and this has been found by careful experiment and observation to diminish the crop.
Some farmers object to using a light harrow for cultivation in the early stages of the crop because they say the harrow will destroy the crop as well as the weeds. This danger is not so great as it seems. The seeds of the crop are deeper in the soil than the seeds of the weeds which germinate and appear so quickly. ”

“ The order of the seasons seemed to be inverted; rains, flood, and failures in crops were so general that few places were exempt from them; and though an historian of this century assure us that there was an abundance in the granaries and storehouses, all his contemporaries, with one voice, contradict him. The consequences of failure in the crops were soon felt, especially in Italy and the surrounding countries, where, in this year, a rain, which continued for four months, had destroyed the seed. ”