Intensive agriculture

“ The experience in agriculture of these large numbers of men, coupled with their ability for the hard manual labor required in truck gardening, in intensive farming, and especially in the opening up of new land, has been wastefully cast aside. The significance of such loss is clear in view of the fundamental importance of agriculture in the nation's life. About two thirds of the area of our country is uncultivated as yet, and the one third that is cultivated is worked extensively rather than intensively. ”

“ The past few decades have seen the emergence of three broad types of food production systems. 'Industrial agriculture', capital– and input-intensive and usually large-scale, is dominant in North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and in some small areas in developing countries. 'Green Revolution agriculture' is found in uniform, resource-rich, often flat and irrigated areas in the agricultural heartlands of some developing countries. ”

“ We think we have developed intensive and perfected systems of agriculture; but as a matter of fact, and speaking broadly, a permanent organized agriculture is yet unknown. In certain regions, as in Great Britain, the producing-power of the land has been increased over a long series of years, but this has been accomplished to a great extent by the transportation of fertilizing materials from the ends of the earth. ”

“ Our arid lands will be made fertile by irrigation, but they will add only a small percentage to the amount already in quasi-cultivation. Our future food supplies must be drawn largely from the six million farms now under fences. These farms must be made to yield fourfold their present product, or they will fall short, not only of the demands made upon them, but also of their possibilities. That is why I preach the gospel of intensive farming, for grain, hay, market, and factory farm alike. ”

“ We can then free some three million hectares now devoted to marginal rice and corn growing to other uses -- to pasture, to aqua-culture and to high value crops. These efforts in agriculture must be matched by equally resolute efforts at agrarian reform. ”

“ The ordinary high-priced, manufactured, acidulated, so-called "complete" commercial fertilizers, in the small amounts that farmers can afford to use, and do use quite generally in the older states, serve in part as soil-stimulants and commonly leave the land poorer year by year; and if the farmers of the great Corn and Wheat Belts are ever to adopt systems of permanent agriculture, it must be done in the near future, or they too will awake to find their lands impoverished beyond self-redemption. ”

“ It is the increase of food production, on which the very life of the nation, its development and future strength, depend. The war demonstrated this in a most convincing way. The increase of productivity of the land must be continuous and permanent. The 1920 Census reports city population increases five times as rapidly as rural. Aside from conservation of the soil—that is, saving what we have—there must go on constant improvement of the soil by fertilizing and by the introduction of more [Pg 12] efficient methods of cultivation, intensive as well as extensive. ”

“ Our cultivated soil, they claim, is becoming “weary of yields,” an increase in crops could no longer be expected, and since fresh soil that still might be cultivated is becoming rarer, the danger of a scarcity of food, if the population continues to increase, is imminent. In the chapters on agriculture we have, so we believe, already proved irrefutably of what enormous progress mankind is still capable in the matter of obtaining new masses of nourishment, judging even by the present state of agricultural science. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Under these conditions the area of land devoted to the several grain crops diminishes in ratio to that given to other crops, varied farming taking the place of the all-wheat or all-corn system. But by the introduction of intensive farming there is a steady improvement and increase in the quantity and the quality of the crops derived from a given area of soil. The wheat needed for home use will keep even with population for many years without any increase in area. ”

“ A social structure in which few farmers feed a great number of idlers forces the farmers into labor-saving, high-yield, mass-supply agriculture, and this necessitates the heavy use of agricultural chemicals and chemical fertilizers, as well as making the farmers neglect the application of compost to the land. ”

“ Irrigation certainly furnishes the ideal method for raising a varied crop, giving each crop individual treatment, serving each of thirty varieties of plants and trees with just the amount of daily moisture they individually need, so as to produce maximum products. [Pg 107] No wonder three crops in a year sometimes result, and sometimes five crops of alfalfa in the Southwest. Here we come to the highest development of intensive farming where the utmost value of agricultural science has free play and rivals the results of research and skill in any other line of human effort. ”

“ Not only since its inception in 1840 has this industry contributed to the supply of plant food, which in the end means human food, but it has noted the wasteful methods of agriculture being practiced, unconsciously frequent, in many parts of this country, and it has put forth continuous efforts along the lines of educating the American farmer to grow larger yields of better crops, to maintain and increase the fertility of the soil, and increase the average yield per acre. ”

“ A five-year and, even better, a six-year rotation, is more effective than a four-year in maintaining the crop-producing power of the soil and enables the farmer to reduce his cost of production. It is possible to keep a larger proportion of the farm in grass and 180 other forage crops, thus reducing the amount of land plowed annually and at the same time decreasing the exhaustion of the land, provided the forage crops are fed to live stock upon the farm.
There is an old Flemish proverb which reads:
The point of this proverb is that good grass is the basis of good agriculture. ”

“ It is probable that the strong competition of immense farms in grain raising, possibly also in sugar raising from either cane or beets, and in seed raising, will awaken among the smaller [pg 203] farmers attention to finer grades of farming and more care for the fertility of their fewer acres.
On the whole, the tendency with increasing population is toward smaller farms with more intensive farming. Whether our country, with its stronger commercial energy, will follow this tendency as exhibited in northern Europe seems doubtful. ”

“ Inasmuch, then, as the amount of food which the world can consume is limited, the smaller will be the number of farmers required to produce the needed supply, and the larger will be the number driven from the country to the city. It has already been observed that if 34 scientific methods were universally adopted in the United States, doubtless one half of those now engaged in agriculture could produce the present crops, which would compel the other half to abandon the farm. ”

“ To bring about the adoption of systems of farming that will restore our depleted Eastern and Southern soils, and that will maintain or increase the productive power of our remaining fertile lands of the Great Central West, where we are now producing half of the total corn crop of the entire world, is not only the most important material problem of the United States; but to bring this about is worthy of, and will require, the best thought of the most influential men of America. Without a prosperous agriculture here there can be no permanent prosperity for our American institutions. ”

“ Instead of studying and adopting the agriculture of similar climates, and the arts by which deficiencies in similar latitudes have from time immemorial been corrected: irrigation, for instance, has not been yet attempted; the natural fertility of the soil has alone been relied on, to compensate, in favourable, seasons, for the deficiencies of others, not favourable, perhaps, for the growth of wheat or barley, but the best imaginable for that of other kinds of productions. ”

“ The staple products, especially wheat, being so easily adapted to new countries, are constantly liable to over-production. At the same time the effects of a bad season in any particular region, while reducing the crop, are not [pg 255] likely to advance the price to the same extent as formerly. The opening of vast regions once considered deserts to a rapid settlement by farmers for the sake of the profits in land speculation has again and again wrought changes in the entire business of agriculture. ”

“ Valuable as are the contributions of science to the problems of soil and plant and animal, the ultimate contribution comes from the development of improved men. So the real end is not merely to utilize each acre to its utmost, nor to provide cheap food for the people who do not farm, nor yet to render agriculture industrially strong. ”

“ Next on the program of the Central Administration of Agriculture is the building up of new branches of rural industry, such as the working of sugar beets into molasses and into beet flour, in the northern districts, the production of ammonium sulphate out of the lower grades of peat, the preparation of fodder out of animal refuse, the production of turf litter material, the preparation of new sources of nitrate fertilizer out of peat, etc.
Electric power must be utilized for the cultivation of land. ”

“ The offices of the hollow straws may be performed by a system of ridging and back furrowing, having previously covered the soil with leaves, or other refuse organic material.
In high farming, where the object of the cultivator is to make a profitable investment of labor, these last named methods will be found most expedient; but, if the farmer have a large quantity of land, and can afford but a limited amount of labor, the raising of green crops, to be plowed under in the fall, will probably be adopted. ”

“ In the days to come, perhaps a thousand years from now, there may be four or five people to the acre living under conditions of intensive cultivation. This is just the sort of land that will support a population to the best advantage, and you have here conditions suitable for the crop that is to be the crop of the future. People do not fully utilize nature's resources until there is need for doing so. ”

“ Paucity of arable land in mountain regions leads to the utilization of the untillable slopes for stock grazing. This industry is always a valuable ally to mountain agriculture on account of the manure which it yields; but in high altitudes, where the steepness or rockiness of the soil, cold and the brevity of the growing season restrict or eliminate cereal crops, it becomes the dominant occupation of the inhabitants, while agriculture takes a subordinate place, limited to the production of hay and fodder for the winter feeding of the stock. ”

“ Miss de Lisle and Philip Hardress entered into every plan, lending the help of brains as well as hands. The farm was put under intensive culture, and the first provision made for the future was that of fertilizers, which, since most of them came from abroad, were certain to be scarce. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sales off the Farm.—The day is now here when the major portion of human food must be provided in grain and vegetables and fruit, and the demand for hay and grain for animals off the farm is very large. Fiber products likewise must be supplied. The draft upon the soil is heavy, but it must be good farm practice to supply bread and vegetables and fruit to the 70 per cent of our population that is not on farms. The great majority of farmers do not feed all their crops to livestock, and the amount of food-stuffs, for human beings and animals, that is now going off the farms is none too great. ”

“ One hundred bushels of corn to an acre have been repeatedly produced, and other crops in like abundance. But this will not effect the proper ends of a judicious and profitable agriculture, unless we can so manage our husbandry that, by a judicious and proper succession of the crops, land will not only be restored after an exhausting crop, but gradually enriched by cultivation. It is of the highest importance that our farmers should increase their power of sustaining live stock, that they may obtain in that way the means of improving their farms. ”

“ The development of tray, or soil-less, farming may entirely change the picture of agriculture and its perennially troublesome problems. It is not difficult to forsee in artificial climate making a force which may raise the health level and change production methods in may industries and affect the distribution of population in such a way that even the tropics may be made habitable for a dense white population and offer a temporary relief from the oncoming saturation of population in temperate regions. Many old industries are bound to be greatly modified or entirely superseded ”