Agriculture the Basis of All Wealth
By William Dennison, Fargo, N. D.
Agriculture is the basis of all wealth. It is the foundation upon which rests all the vast wealth which has been acquired in this country to-day. It is also the buttress which protects, supports and defends all this acquired wealth. Without agriculture all this wealth would crumble away. Yet, is it not sad to contemplate that, while the tillers of the soil have been building such a gigantic structure that they have not received a fair share of the spoils? They have been sowing while others reaped the reward. Presumably the farmers were to blame themselves for the unequal division of the profits. It is a well-known fact, that cannot be controverted, that ever since the Pilgrim Fathers and the Scotch-Irish landed on these shores they have been exploiting the land, taking all they could get out of it and putting nothing back in return. They surely could not expect that such conditions could last forever, but that there would come a reckoning day sooner or later. That period of an accounting is long past due with the original settlers and is past due with more recent ones. That is, if we take into consideration the great amount of knowledge which has been acquired agriculturally during the last half of the nineteenth century, and with all the aids of fifty or more agricultural colleges scattered all over this great country. Yet nine-tenths of the tillers of the soil are still going on exploiting their land, and when failure comes they wonder why their land does not yield like it used to when they first broke it up and started to cultivate it. These agricultural colleges are grand institutions, and their object and aim is a noble one, that of helping the farmer, and cannot be too highly praised for their efforts. However, I am afraid that a great majority of our farmers have received little or no benefit from them. They are too scientific and technical for the average farmer to understand and derive any benefit therefrom. The average farmer wants it in simple language, in primary lessons, so that he can grasp it and then put it to the test. They know nothing about the chemical nomenclature which they use in expounding things. It is all Latin to them. What the tillers of the soil want is information on these subjects, in plain Anglo-Saxon, and as plain as possible even then.
It would be well for them to know what constitutes fertility, generally speaking. There are three constituent elements of fertility, namely: nitrogen, phosphate and potash. The first element, nitrogen, is what may be termed the motive power in the growing of the crops. There are inexhaustible supplies of this element in the atmosphere, and it only needs to be brought down. It costs you nothing. Help yourself. But it is a very costly element if you have to purchase it as a commercial commodity. Nitrogen, like the air we breathe, we can only use as we need it. It is a substance that cannot be cornered or there would have been trusts formed in the country, making every farmer in the land pay tribute to them. The second member is a mineral element, phosphate. The first condition necessary for the activity of a living organism is food. The food of plants and animals, in some respects, is different, but both are alike in requiring a supply of certain mineral substances for their nourishment. One of the most essential constituents of this mineral food is phosphoric acid. Without phosphates there can be neither growth nor life. This is why phosphates are so essential to worn-out land, especially where wheat has been grown continuously.
The third is also a mineral element, which completes the trine in fertility. Such crops as the cereals draw mostly on the phosphates within the soil; but a crop of potatoes draws mostly on the potash contained in the soil. You cannot go on indefinitely raising potatoes on the same land without furnishing potash. If you do, the tubers produced will be entirely lacking in starchy matter and altogether too much gluten. When these three constituent elements of fertility are in the land and rightly balanced, then your land is in the highest condition of fertility. But if one of these elements is taken out by poor methods of farming, then your land, to use a horseman’s phrase, is said to be out of fettle. But in the next twenty-five years, when the farmers of this country get down to hardpan, when the yield of their crops has deteriorated to such a degree not only in the quantity of the product, but also in the quality of the product, which is more important than quantity, in other words, when necessity compels them, then I look for the fruits of the labors of the agricultural experiment colleges. Renewing the soil is analogous to the redemption of the soul of man. We have the Word for it, and the promises are sure and steadfast; yet we may have all the knowledge on the subject, but that will not obtain eternal life. The Lord cannot save us unless we co-operate with him and do our part. While I am, and always have been, an earnest advocate of the greater use of legumes in restoring the fertility of our land, I am fully alive to the importance of putting back all the manure from the farmyard onto the land. I was raised on an extensive truck garden, and there is no reason to doubt the capacity of the soil to yield a product to which no one can yet forecast the limit. As an instance of the possibilities of the land under intensive culture, the Long Island market gardeners apply from seventy to eighty tons of stable manure to their early cabbages per acre, and as the plants are much closer and are much more sure to head universally, a yield of fifty tons to the acre is not an excessive estimate. The above will show what can be done with a liberal supply of stable manure.
But why waste our time on what can be done with manure? Why, nine-tenths of the farmers in the United States don’t make any manure. Their stock, what they have, are all out on the run all, or nearly, the whole of the year. I have come to the conclusion that to advocate intensive farming under existing circumstances is not practical at the present time, when we take into consideration the vastness of this country and likewise the remoteness of the great majority of the farmers from a home market. A good home market is a great desideratum for our American farmer. Andrew Carnegie saw the paramount importance of a good home market when he was making his millions. But this idea alone does not show fully the sagacity of Andrew. It was when he discovered how he could perpetuate this good home market when he overproduced his product, which was the case all of the time. He shipped his surplus product to foreign markets and sold it for about half what he was charging us at home. By this clever stroke he was enabled to make of non-effect the great law of supply and demand. But in order to accomplish this Andrew had a high tariff on his product, and presumably he was smart enough to get rebates from the railroad companies. But the farmers haven’t any tariff on the product they raise and when they ship their products by railroads they have to pay schedule rates and pay the entire freight to destination, no matter where the destination may be. But in the near future, when the population is largely increased and more evenly distributed, when the exodus will be from the cities to the country, and not, as it is now, from the farm to the cities; when the smaller towns in every State have become towns and cities teeming with thousands of inhabitants, making a home market for the farmers where they can sell, not only the cereals they raise, but also milk, cattle, sheep, hogs, horses, hides, eggs and vegetables, then will be the time to begin intensive farming and also the proper observance of the rotation of their crops.
But it is the intervening time between now and then that we want to bridge over; but this period is going to be the crucial time for our farmers. However, it is not going to be a situation without hope if the tillers of the soil do their part, but they have got to do that if their environment compels them to still keep on raising cereals. Now that the United States has taken the lead as a wheat raising country, I regret to state that I can see no better way out of it than for them to still keep on raising this cereal. But what we want to consider is how that can be done and maintain the fertility of the land for some years to come.
This, I believe, is possible to every one who is willing to avail himself of the means at hand. The experiments carried on at Rothamsteed show conclusively that “continuous wheat-growing is, from a natural point of view, an extravagant mode of farming, only justifiable, like other extravagances, under the pressure of a more or less artificial environment, for the wheat crop has completed its growth and is harvested long before nitrification has ceased in the soil, and there is no crop to take up the balance formed after the active growth of the wheat is over, and these nitrates pass away in sub-soil drainage in mild, genial climates, during the winter.” Under these circumstances, as soon as the wheat is harvested, then should we put in a catch crop, a legume suitable to the latitude, which would not only take up the balance of nitrates unused by the wheat crop, but would put a new supply of nitrogen into the soil for the succeeding crop. The above applies to the latitudes where they have long seasons and a moist, mild climate. This would not apply to those latitudes where the seasons are short and exposed to long winter frosts. To the wheat growers of the Northwest, where their seasons are short, there is no time for a catch crop for them. I would advise to fallow their land as soon as the wheat crop is harvested. This would stop the loss of nitrates and exterminate the great crop of weeds which takes possession after the wheat crop is harvested.
Finally, to all, in whatever latitude you are situated, I would suggest that you start in and treat your wheat land to an application of one thousand pounds of raw ground phosphate rock per acre. (It is cheap—it only costs about four dollars per ton f. o. b. cars at the mine.) After spreading the phosphate on the land, plow and prepare your seed bed. In the North sow your wheat and your red clover. The application of phosphates will give the legume a good start, and the following year a luxuriant growth of the legume may be expected, which will exterminate all weeds. Then, in the following spring break up your legume land, the soil of which will be full of fiber, and receive the reward of three continuous crops of wheat, greatly enhanced, both in quantity and quality. Then, on the fourth year another application of raw ground rock phosphate and a legume crop with it, followed by three years of continuous wheat again. During this time if you will add all the manure you can, either a stable manure or ammonium salts, then I think you can go on indefinitely raising wheat.
For confirmation of the merits of ground phosphate rock for worn-out wheat lands, consult Prof. Cyril G. Hopkins, director of the Illinois Experimental Station, Urbana, Ill.