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The Farm That Won't Wear Out

By Cyril G. Hopkins

Preface

THE FARM THAT WON'T WEAR OUT

WAS FIRST published serially in THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, the privilege having been granted the author of subsequent publication. It is now issued in book form in response to numerous requests coming especially from the Central, Eastern, and Southern States.

CYRIL G. HOPKINS.

CHAMPAIGN, ILL.

"Population must increase rapidly, more rapidly than in former times, and ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil."—Lincoln.

"It is not the land itself that constitutes the farmer's wealth, but it is in the constituents of the soil, which serve for the nutrition of plants, that this wealth truly consists."—Liebig.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I: What Goes To Make Up Permanent Fertility CHAPTER II: The Nitrogen Problem And Its Economical Solution CHAPTER III: Phosphorus: The Master Key To Permanent Agriculture CHAPTER IV: Permanent Soil Fertility: Its Relation to Profits and Future Values

CHAPTER I

WHAT GOES TO MAKE UP PERMANENT FERTILITY

IT IS an old saying that "any fool can farm," and this was almost the truth when farming consisted chiefly in reducing the fertility of new, rich land secured at practically no cost from a generous Government. But to restore depleted soils to high productive power in economic systems is no fool's job, for it requires mental as well as muscular energy; and no apologies should be expected from those who necessarily make use of technical terms in the discussion of this technical subject, notwithstanding the common foolish advice that farmers should be given a sort of "parrot" instruction in almost baby language instead of established facts and principles in definite and permanent scientific terms. The farmer should be as familiar with the names of the ten essential elements of plant food as he is with the names of his ten nearest neighbors. Safe and permanent systems of soil improvement and preservation may come with intelligence—never with ignorance—on the part of the landowners.

When the knowledge becomes general that food for plants is just as necessary as food for animals, then American agriculture will mean more than merely working the land for all that's in it. This knowledge is as well established as the fact that the earth is round, although the people are relatively few who understand or make intelligent application of the existing information.

Agricultural plants consist of ten elements, known as the essential elements of plant food; and not a kernel of corn or a grain of wheat, not a leaf of clover or a spear of grass can be produced if the plant fails to secure any one of these ten elements. Some of these are supplied to plants in abundance by natural processes; others are not so provided and must be supplied by the farmer, or his land becomes impoverished and unproductive.