Fertile land

“ Our forest lands should be handled just like fertile farming lands that produce big crops. The farmer does not attempt to take all the fertility out of the land in the harvest of one bumper crop. He handles the field so that it will produce profitable crops every season. He fertilizes the soil and tills it so as to add to its productive power. Similarly, our forests should be worked so that they will yield successive crops of lumber year after year. ”

“ In the north the soil had little natural fertility, and was covered with dense forests, so that much time and labour had to be expended in making a clearing before the seed could be sown.* In the south, on the contrary, the squatter had no trees to fell, and no clearing to make. Nature had cleared the land for him, and supplied him with a rich black soil of marvellous fertility, which has not yet been exhausted by centuries of cultivation. Why, then, did the peasant often prefer the northern forests to the fertile Steppe where the land was already prepared for him? ”

“ The influence of climate upon stature is therefore a question of faculty of assimilation and of the quantity of available food. For this last reason, the fertility of the soil has a considerable influence upon the size of the population. A well-cultivated country, furnishing abundance of food and cattle, permits its population to acquire a much greater size, strength, and robustness than would be possible to a population living on infertile lands insufficiently supporting its inhabitants. ”

“ Therefore, plants on worn-out land are too nearly starved to yield bountifully. Such wearing out is so easily prevented that no owner ought ever to allow his land to become poverty-stricken. But in case this misfortune has happened, how can the land be again made fertile? ”

“ If each proprietor seems to possess more land than he can require, and if the fertile soil produces bountifully that which is unskilfully sown therein, the total amount of land under cultivation is still very limited indeed. ”

“ The land being exceedingly fertile, never failed to produce a crop of vegetation, and when one variety did appear and cover the entire surface as thick as it could grow for a few years, it seemed to exhaust the quality of the soil that produced that kind, and that variety would give way and something new come up. ”

“ Indeed, these primary conditions of fertility and large habitability appertain to America, as a whole, to such degree, that, with less than half the extent of the Old World, it actually numbers more acres of fertile soil, and can, of course, sustain a larger population. ”

“ It is now necessary to consider more closely the true cause of the conversion of arable land to pasture—the declining productivity of the soil—and the cause of the restoration of this land to cultivation—the restoration of its fertility.
The connection between soil fertility and the system of husbandry has been explained by Dr. Russell, of the Rothamsted Experiment Station:
Virgin land covered with its native vegetation appears to alter very little and very slowly in composition. ”

“ Without an adequate return to the land of the matters removed in the produce, its fertility cannot be maintained for many years. In newly opened countries, where old forests have been cleared and the land brought under cultivation, the virgin soil often possesses at first a high degree of fertility, but gradually its productive power decreases from year to year. ”

“ Another line in which very great improvement is shown is in maintaining the fertility of the soil. The old method was to exhaust the fertility of a field and then clear a new one; and it is doubtful if one farmer in a hundred could have answered the question, “Why does land become sterile after long cultivation?” for they had no conception of what the chemical elements of the soil were which are necessary to its fertility. There are two theories of fertilizing and fertility: one, that the soil is a mine to be worked out, and which will inevitably become unproductive in the process ”

“ No such need was felt by the inhabitants of the arid regions for centuries, for the native fertility of their soils, coupled with the fertilizing effects of irrigation water bringing plant-food from afar, relieved them of the need of continuous fertilization; while in the humid regions, the fertility of the land is currently carried into the sea by the drainage waters, through the streams and rivers, causing a chronic depletion which has to be made up for by artificial and costly means. ”

“ This luxuriance of growth does not proceed entirely from the moisture supplied by the ditches and drains; the soil naturally is uncommonly fertile: and whatever springs from it, whether planted by the hand of man, and nourished, while growing, by his attention and skill, or its spontaneous production, bears witness to this uncommon fertility. The country abounds in corn and vineyards ”

“ As we sail down the river in this approaching harvest-season we are in continual wonder at the fertility of the land; a fertility on the slightest cultivation, the shallowest plowing, and without fertilization. ”

“ When these words were uttered, there seemed to be an endless expanse of public lands that only awaited the pioneer's plow to yield their virgin fertility; these lands have now been practically all taken up, and it is doubly important that the fertility of our soils should be preserved. The very fact that tenancy of farm lands tends to deplete their fertility is sufficient reason for a general interest in the subject. ”

“ And this, indeed, is all the fertilization they need,—so strong is the soil all over the Campagna. The accretions and decay of thousands of years have covered it with a loam whose richness and depth are astonishing. Dig where you will, for ten feet down, and you do not pass through its wonderfully fertile loam into gravel, and the slightest labor is repaid a hundred-fold. ”

“ Hitherto, I have considered a case where fertility is almost absent from the land, this, however, is an exception, as agriculture generally is carried on upon soils which contain large stores of fertility, though they may be very unequally distributed. ”

“ The area of country suitable for cultivation is circumscribed by reason of the scarcity of water, but where this is obtained and utilised, its effect is magical, and the fertility of the land becomes almost incredible. ”

“ Another method of increasing fertility at increased expense deserves notice. The vacant public lands are for the most part desert-like, and their utilization can come about only through irrigation.
This land can be made to produce the finest crops in the world; and the tremendous volumes of water that flow from the mountains to the sea, once harnessed and piped or ditched to this land, will transform it into beautiful gardens and farms. ”

“ By fertility is meant the power of the soil to furnish plant-food. Fertile soil is "rich" soil. By tillage is meant frequent stirring of the soil. For example, Billy Boy and his chum each have a flower garden side by side of equal size. Each boy sows seeds from the same bag. The same sunshine and the same rains give vigor to each flower-bed alike. Billy Boy spades the soil deep and makes it fine. His chum stirs the top and leaves clods on the surface. ”

“ It is true that immense labour is required to make room for the plough, but the peculiar strength and quality of the soil never fails most amply to reward the industrious possessor; I know of no soil in this country more rich or more fertile. I do not mean that sort of transitory fertility which evaporates with the sun, and disappears in a few years; here on the contrary, even their highest grounds are covered with a rich moist swamp mould, which bears the most luxuriant grass, and never-failing crops of grain. ”

“ Every one of these properties of the fertile soil, and consequently every one of the conditions necessary for the growth and development of plant roots, is influenced in some way by every operation performed on the soil, whether it be plowing, harrowing, cultivating, applying manure, growing crops, harvesting, or anything else, and the thoughtful farmer will frequently ask himself the question: "How is this going to effect the fertility of my soil or the conditions necessary for profitable crop production?" ”

“ Finally, as the most important principle of the system, the soil should be cultivated continually, the argument being that by continuous cultivation the fertility of the soil would be increased, the water would be conserved, and as the soil became more fertile less water would be used. To accomplish such cultivation, all crops should be placed in rows rather far apart, so far indeed that a horse carrying a cultivator could walk between them. ”

“ What with the greater intrinsic fertility and the great depth of soil available for plant growth, much smaller units of land will suffice for the maintenance of a family in arid countries; a fact which is even now being illustrated in the irrigated region of the United States, where ten acres of irrigated land instead of 40 or 160, as in the East, form the unit. ”

“ I have seen cattle slowly lose condition and fall in milk yield when fed entirely on the abundant produce of an apparently fertile soil. Though the soil was capable of yielding heavy crops, those crops were not adequate in themselves to maintain body weight and milk production in the cow, without supplements. That soil, though capable of above-average yields, and by the orthodox quantitative measure regarded as fertile, could not, by the more complete measure of ultimate effect on the consumer, be regarded but anything but deficient in fertility. ”

“ It is a rule with few exceptions that the absence of livestock on the farm is an index of gradual reduction in the productive power of the land. Generally speaking, the farmers who feed the most of their crops on the farm are maintaining fertility, and those who do not feed their crops on the farm have been making drafts upon the soil's stores of available plant-food that are evidenced in a reduction of yields. ”

“ Now it is true, unfortunately, that much land has been robbed of its fertility, and, because this is true, we should be most deeply interested in everything that leads to the improvement of our soils. ”

“ The very evident decrease in the fertility of those soils which have been under cultivation for a number of years, combined with the increased competition and the advanced price of labor, have convinced the intelligent farmer that the agriculture of the future must be based upon more rational practices than those which have been followed in the past. We have felt for some time that there was a place for a brief, and at the same time comprehensive, treatise on this important subject of Soil Fertility. ”

“ It will be thus understood, that though it does not directly supply food to the plant, it ministers indirectly in a most important manner to its well-being, and that to so great an extent that it must be considered an indispensable constituent of a fertile soil. But it is important to observe that it must not be present in too large a quantity, for an excess does away with all the good effects of a smaller supply, and produces soils notorious for their infertility. ”

“ Their indolence, it is added, is not to be attributed wholly to the climate, or their own original constitution, but chiefly to the extreme fertility of the soil, and the comparative ease with which a man and his family can derive subsistence from it. ”

“ Notwithstanding the great antiquity of agriculture, the husbandmen, for several centuries immediately succeeding the deluge, seem to have been but little acquainted with any proper method of restoring fertility to exhausted soils; for we find them frequently changing their residence, as their flocks and herds required fresh pasturage, or as their tillage land became unproductive. As men, however, became more numerous, and as their flocks increased, this practice became inconvenient and, in some cases, impracticable. ”

“ Common Source of Losses.—When we bear in mind that four fifths of all the fertility removed from the land in the grains and coarse stuffs fed on the farm may be recovered from the animals and returned to the soil, we can appreciate the consideration that the care of manure should have on every farm. The careless methods that prevail in most sections of the country are an inheritance from the day when soils were new and full of fertility. ”

“ The enormous profits of cultivating a virgin soil without the need of artificial fertilization; the advantages which a sparse population derives from the privilege of selecting for tillage only the choicest spots,371 those most accessible, most fertile, most easily brought under the plow ”

“ A proper three or fiveyear rotation of crops actually enriches the land.
_"Third—_There must be soil renovation by fertilizing; and the best fertilizer is that provided by nature herself—barnyard manure. Every farmer can and should keep some cattle, sheep, and hogs on his place. The farmer and his land cannot prosper until stock raising becomes an inseparable part of agriculture. Of all forage fed to live stock at least one-third in cash value remains on the land in the form of manure that soon restores worn-out soil to fertility and keeps good land from deteriorating. ”

“ Millions of tons of fertilizer and lime must be poured into the soil of the East and South to restore pre-war fertility. The country’s work horses are old and before 1933 almost a new crop must be raised. ”