How may a farmer obtain the requisite knowledge?
When are the services of a consulting agriculturist required?
The way in which an analysis should be used is a matter of much importance. To a man who knows nothing of chemistry (be he ever so successful a farmer), an analysis, as received from a chemist, would be as useless and unintelligible as though it were written in Chinese; while, if a chemist who knew nothing of farming, were to give him advice concerning the application of manures, he would be led equally astray, and his course would be any thing but practical. It is necessary that chemical and practical knowledge should be combined, and then the value of analysis will be fully demonstrated. The amount of knowledge required is not great, but it must be thorough. The information contained in this little book is sufficient, but it would be folly for a man to attempt to use an analysis from reading it once hurriedly over. It must be studied and thought on with great care, before it can be of material assistance. The evenings of one winter, devoted to this subject, will enable a farmer to understand the application of analysis to practical farming, especially if other and more compendious works are also read. A less time could hardly be recommended.
Is there any doubt as to the practical value of analysis?
How should samples of soil for analysis be selected?
Where this attention cannot be given to the subject, the services of a Consulting Agriculturist should be employed to advise the treatment necessary to render fertile the soil analyzed.
Every farmer, however, should learn enough of the principles of agriculture to be able to use an analysis, when procured, without such assistance.[AQ]
Nearly all scientific men (all of the highest merit) are unanimous in their conviction of the practical value of an analysis of soils; and a volume of instances of their success, with hardly a single failure, might be published.
Prof. Mapes says, in the Working Farmer, that he has given advice on hundreds of different soils, and not a single instance can be found where he has failed to produce a profit greater than the cost of analysis and advice. Dr. T. C. Jackson, of Boston, the late Prof. Norton, of Yale College, and others, have had universal success in this matter.
Analysis must be considered the only sure road to economical farming.