Paper, “Conservation of the Soil”
CONSERVATION OF THE SOIL.
Hon. James J. Hill, of St. Paul, Minn.
Just as all industry depends upon the production and increase of the fruits of the earth, so all other forms of Conservation must be held subordinate to the preservation of the productivity of the soil. To preserve and defend the public health, to see that human beings are brought into the world and kept there under favoring conditions, and to lengthen their term of life will but add to the total of human misery unless they are well fed and housed and clothed. For this, as for the material of all their varied activities, they must come back in the last analysis to the soil. Earth is the mother not only of mankind but of all human industry.
In the years during which the necessity of this most imperative form of Conservation has been the subject of my thought and the theme of most of my public utterances, much has been accomplished. The interest of the public is awake. It is not necessary any longer to urge a Conservation movement, but rather to direct the energy already enlisted in its behalf into wise channels. While the farmer is still subject to some unfavorable legislative discrimination, we know that his prosperity must be made a first object before prosperity can visit others. The progress of the farm is put first in many schemes of public improvement where, a few years ago, it would have been mentioned perfunctorily if at all.
Education in agriculture has made much progress. The number of institutions teaching agriculture increased more than sixty per cent. in nineteen months. They had ten per cent. more students in agriculture in 1910 than in 1909, and more than eight times as many students taking the teachers’ course in agriculture. Colleges and high schools give place to some form of agricultural instruction; and the necessity of fostering soil Conservation is recognized today as never before.
What we need to do at once belongs rather to the practical than to the theoretical side of Conservation. There is little reason to doubt that the farmer of the future should be a highly intelligent man, commanding from his acres crops that are far beyond those of today in their abundance. But the present generation may and should do far better for itself, in its own time, while it is also preparing the way for the more careful and productive agriculture which should follow.
I use intentionally the words “careful” and “productive” instead of the word “scientific,” as applied to soil treatment and crop raising, because they express the simple and easy processes within the reach of men of the present generation as well as the new; because they avoid a misleading implication that attaches to the word “scientific.” It is true that the best methods of soil treatment and crop growing are scientific; but they require only that form of popular science which is within the comprehension and use of every farmer.
The essentials of soil Conservation have been known for centuries. They were practiced in Babylonia, just as irrigation was resorted to there on a splendid scale. They have been the property of the Chinese for four thousand years, and maintained there a dense population in spite of croppings so frequent and severe that it would seem impossible for any soil to stand such treatment without exhaustion. The latest bulletin of the best agricultural institution is scarcely more instructive or helpful than a study of the “forty centuries of agriculture” included in the experience of these skilled and laborious people of the Orient.
The soil is a living thing, and must receive the treatment due to all organic and vital beings from which we expect service or tribute. The first requisite is that the individual man learn with what manner of soil he is dealing. There is now an agricultural college or experiment station within the reach of every farmer in the country. Some are and all should be equipped for a scientific analysis of all soils submitted to them. From this the cultivator may learn the first two things indispensable to any intelligent conduct of his industry: First, to what crops his land is best adapted; second, what elements of fertility have been drawn from it so lavishly that they need to be restored. This information having been given by competent authority, every farmer may do all the rest for himself.
There is no secret and no mystery about the processes involved. If farmers will rotate their crops, fertilize plentifully and intelligently, keep live stock to diversify their industry, refresh the land and utilize waste products, and cultivate thoroughly and frequently, the problem of soil Conservation is solved. The earth has been kept as productive for thousands of years as it was when it produced its first crop of cultivated cereals wherever these few and simple conditions have been observed. If seed is carefully selected, after a test for germination, and the practices mentioned are followed, there is no reason why the yield per acre of the principal crops of the United States should not equal those of England, Germany or many other countries which produce twice as much as we do with far inferior natural advantages.
Dr. Knapp, of the Department of Agriculture, said: “It has been found that the best seed bed added 100 per cent. to the average crop on similar lands, with an average preparation; planting the best seed made a gain of 50 per cent.; and shallow, frequent cultivation was equal to another 50 per cent., making a total gain of 200 per cent., or a crop three times the average. With better teams and implements, this crop is made at less cost per acre.” A bulletin of the Bureau of Plant Industry, at Washington, says: “It is possible within a few years to double the average production of corn per acre in the United States, and to accomplish it without any increase in work or expense.” It declares that twice twenty-six bushels, which is about what we now get, is a fair crop where these conditions are observed, three times twenty-six bushels a good crop and four times twenty-six bushels frequently produced. A similar increase in other farm growths is just as possible.
In a high sense this is conservation of the soil, because it shows the way to make one acre do the work of two or three or four. It is conservation of the soil in a still better sense, because the land, when so intelligently and considerately treated, instead of “wearing out,” not only maintains its productive power indefinitely but actually increases in fertility and value. These are facts which all history attests. They are facts which the most recent scientific research supports. The work before the promoters of the Conservation movement today is one not of discovery but of education. It is to assist in bringing home the truth to the minds and embodying it in the daily practice of the present farm population of the United States.
This tremendous task can be accomplished only by local demonstration and the force of practical example. Small model farms should be operated, preferably consisting of a few acres selected from ordinary neighborhood farms and treated intelligently, in every State, county and township. We have made a beginning of this work in the Northwest; and the results, though not yet completely enough ascertained for tabulation until the tale of threshing and marketing is ended, are as amazing as they are encouraging. Some of the States are providing for traveling instructors and supervisors in agriculture, following the policy successfully adopted in the most enlightened countries of Europe, thus raising the level of agricultural practice and educating the millions who are beyond the reach of the institutions where formal instruction is given to the young. It is imperative that we reach the older people, and the large percentage of the children of the farm who never get beyond the district school, if we are in earnest in the work we have undertaken.
To this practical side of soil Conservation this Congress should give its hearty approval. It should urge upon the people of every community the adoption of the demonstration tract and the local instructor, with as much earnestness as it has championed the saving of forests and the reclamation of arid lands. Ten per cent. of the money now expended in formal instruction in the institutions where agriculture is taught, or supposed to be taught, would put every farmer in touch with the man who could and should help him in the treatment of his land as readily and surely as the doctor helps his family when they are sick. It would be more than repaid every year in the value of the crop increase. It would be repaid over again in the healing of sick soils, the renovation of old lands, the preservation undiminished in every acre of our arable area of those elements of fertility without which plant life languishes, and the wilderness and the desert in a few generations sweep away the traces of man’s unworthy occupation. It is well worth the hearty and undivided support of public-spirited men. For without just such Conservation the time will come when our country will be unable to support its own people; the diminishing percentage of its population engaged in tilling the land will still further decline; and it will scarcely be worth while to consider how best human life may be prolonged and made sturdier and wholesomer physically by vital Conservation, because it will lack the sustenance that it can not longer draw in sufficient quantity and quality from nature’s withered breasts.