Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation

comes all of our food; a large part of it directly as plants which grow in the soil and which we eat in the form of roots, leaves,

at comes from the soil they furnish our fuel, our ships, our cars, our furniture, and countless other things. Our clothing is made from th

chapter, and we must first learn the nature of the soil, and the process of its making, in order to understand the need of extraordinary care in its management,

Hills and mountains have been thrown up, and nature has gone to work at once to shave down the mountains and fill up the valleys. The whole earth is as carefully adjusted and balanced as the whe

k decay which is constantly going on under the surface of the earth and in exposed places everywhere, and is caused by the action of air and water. This process is very slow. In places where the rock

nsiderable additions are made to it by the decay of animal and vegetable matter, but in order to keep t

exhausting the entire body of the soil, but on the hills and in the higher regions the soil-depth is very much less than four feet, and the danger of waste much

en for the life of man upon earth,

n would reach seven hundred miles high. If they were laid flat, edge to edge, they would extend from Alaska to the Panama Canal, with enough left over to reach from New York to San Francisco. If the money could be distributed, it would give us all, every man, woman and child in the United States, one hundred dollars apiece. The corn crop was worth $1,720,000,000; the cotton $850,0

of every article we manufacture. Something is taken from our store in the making. But after we have taken these wonderful crops from our farms

t an orchard ten years from now, it will make a great difference to you whether the man who owns it from now until then knows how to care for it so as

ra bushels are all profit. It makes a difference whether a garden furnishes all the fruit and vegetables needed by the family, or whether it does not even pay for cultivation, and the food must be bought at high prices. It mak

it is from the extra money left over after the actual cost of living is taken out that the clothi

ood at home, and have less to export to other countries. In a few years more the public lands will all be taken, and there will

enough to supply all our people, when we shall be buying food from other countries instead of selling to them, when we shal

rmed men of the country on food production and the increase of population, is doing

s, and two-thirds in the country, that is, two-thirds of the people were furnishing food to the remainder. Now conditions are almost exactly reversed. Only one-third remain in the country, and must supply the food, not only for themselves, but for all the two-thirds who are not food producers, so that the food su

or if we are to continue to increase and prosper, for as Secretary Wilson has s

(2) By so using the soil that one or more of its principal elements are worn out. We shall consid

but they are in an inorganic form, that is, they are lifeless. Plants alone can take these inorganic substances from the soil, and change them into starch, suga

obtained by plants through their leaves directly from the air and the sunshine; (6) hydrogen and (7) oxygen, which are taken from the water in the soil and carried to the leaves, where they also help to take the carbon from the atmosphere. With none of these elements, then, does the farmer need to concern hi

at, but a large amount of some of the others. No two varieties of plants require exactly the same proportions, so it is easy to see th

rops were planted in the same way. As a result, some of the most fertile soil in Virginia, the Carolinas, Massachusetts, and other eastern states has been so exhausted that it is no longer worth cultivating. Everywhere throughout the New England states are to be found these worn-out farms, and, while they were never so fertile as the lands of th

rogen is one of the elements of the air, so that there is a never-ending supply, but most plants are unable to take it from the air, and until the last few years the task of replacing nitrogen in the soil was considered impossible. Recent discoveries, however, have shown that there are two ways in which it may be done. By means of electricity, nitrogen may be directly combined with the other elemen

ch requires less nitrogen, and the following year to sow clover, so that the nitrogen which the corn and wheat have taken from the soil, may b

a profitable crop of clover seed may be had from the land. This system of changing each year, and alternating cereal crops, which take the nitrogen from the soil, with

deep into the earth. As these decay, each leaves behind a tiny load of vegetable mold deep in the earth, and also makes the soil more porous. As the principal elements of the soil needed by sugar-beets are carbon and oxygen, which are absorbed from the air and sunshine, and as the beets can be sold at a good profit, it is an

ause nothing is taken from the soil so quickly or in such large quantities as nitrogen, and

of the Agricultural College of the State of Minnesota, where for ten years they have planted corn on one plot of ground. F

shels, or twice the value of the entire average yield on the exhausted ground. The corn grown at the end of the ten years was only about three feet high, the ears were

parts of the United States and is sold at a very low price. But even if these deposits were exhausted we could still use the r

operty of giving off light from itself. The name which was given it means light-bearer. It was at first thought to be the source of all power, to heal all diseases, and to turn the com

make the starch. It enters largely into the grain and seeds of plants, and is necessary for their germination, or sprouting, as well as their growth. Three-fourths of all the phosphorus in a crop of cereals is in the

as been taken out of the soil, which would mean that in one hundred and fifty years, or a hundred years from now, the soil would be incapable of producing any living thing, and long before that time the crops would not pay for

ted long ago. We must remember that nature always adjusts itself; that, in the wild state, all plants decay where they grow, and the same elements are returned ag

in those countries where the natural food can be found only during a part of the year, the nee

se of the expense of feeding them, but few people recognize the fact, which is also true, that it is equall

meat or dairy products, and returning the manure, which contains a large amount of phosphate, to the soil. If all the waste animal products could be returned to the land, Professor Van Hi

treams, polluting them and causing disease, was reduced to commercial fertilizer, it would supply the equivalent of from six to nine pounds of rock phosphate per year for every ac

been used are in Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee, and from them about two and a quarter million tons were mined in 1907. Unfortunately, however,

highest authorities on the subject, says of these deposits that with the exception of our coal and iron lands, they are our most precious mineral possession; that every ounce should be saved for t

ream and noticing how the banks are worn away, and what deep gullies and ravines are cut into them by the water running down from the fields above. Another way in which we can observe

g away the top soil, which is best for agriculture, and, finally, that every little streamlet and creek, as well as the mightiest river, is

ncreases, and the need of great harvests increases, the land is becoming less able to produce them. The Mississippi River is said to tear down from its banks more soil each year than is to be dredged from the Panama Canal. At the mouth of the river is a delta many

left behind the rich soil deposits that fertilized their fields and gave them an abundant harvest. Entire fields and even whole farms along the upper stretches of the Missi

forests of cedar, fir, and oak, its treasures of wheat, olive-oil, and other rich agricultural products. Now all are gone. The entire country seen by the

sts were cut down and the hillsides left bare. Then the streams wore great ravines down the unprotected hillsides. Steadily the work of destruction by erosion has gone on, until time beyond our possibility to comprehend must pass before the land can be made productive again. The hil

endid cities and became great. But the same story of destruction is to be read in the history of Sicily. Now the entire island does not raise a million and a half bushels of wheat altogether. The soil is barren. The cities have nearly all fallen into ruin. The people are scattered. Thousands ha

oming on us. It is only the beginning, but the end is

ates in the Union in natural resources a hundred years ago. Now it is low on the list in agricultural products. The forests on its mountain tops were valuable for their lumber, their turpentine, pitch, and other products, and great lumber companies have almost denuded the hillsides, regardless of the fate of the lands they cut over. The people of the state are powerless to prevent this except by buyi

heat land, but the top was covered with forests. At last he decided to cut and sell the timber, and use the land for raising more wheat. He did so, but now there was no spreading foliage to check the dash

the yield was still less. After a few years he ceased to sow the field because it had never paid for its cultivation, and was constantly growing poorer. But it was too late then to repair the damage that had been done. There were no seeds of forest trees left in the ground and the farmer did not plant them, so the ground lay idle and desolate. The rain

e spring floods had left a rich soil deposit behind them. The farmer down there had been inn

which are never well fitted for cultivation, covered with forests. In this way the soil-wash from above is preven

will mean in the one matter of soil-wash, fruitful lands and bountiful harvests, instead of barren, was

il-wash is beginning on the mountain tops. It is almost equally desirable to plant small shrubs and bushes as an undergrowth,

the banks from erosion, the sloping sides of this roadway have been planted with trailing rose-bushes and other vines which have thickly matted roots. The

d, then, should never be used for field crops. It should constitute the woodland, or if this is not possible, the pasture-land of the farm, for the grass ro

rotation of crops established, there are still other lessons to be learned in order to make our country as produc

-saving machinery has made it possible to farm hundreds and even thousands of acres togethe

and Belgium every bit of land is tended and made useful. We have the best natural soil in the world, the most fertile river valleys, watered by abundant rains. The fertility of our lands is the envy of the civilized world, and has drawn thousands to our shores in the hope of finding comfort and pl

not naturally so productive nor the climate so favorable as ours, but t

elsewhere it plainly shows that we are robbing the soil in order to get the larg

ops are best suited to it and what elements are lacking to make it produce the best. In Illinois more than half a million acres had become unfit f

d to be simple and cheap, while the result of its use will be to double the crop. Nothing else so quickly and easi

or flowers which need little cultivation after they are planted, our food, in variety and quantity, would be greatly increased. "The hedge-rows of Old England" are famous for their beauty an

ar a canning factory the soil can be most profitably used for the raising of vegetables, for

all of us, both because it is opening up for production a large part of our country that has seemed valueless,

t of them, lies a vast region that used to be known as the "great American desert." It comprises almost half of the United States. Here the noble forests of the

ultivation of the soil became almost a necessity. The waste waters of the rivers were used for irrigation and the land when watered was found to produce remarkably fine fruits and agricultural produ

to grow successful crops on these semi-arid lands, where the rainfall was scarcely more than ten inches per year. Others followi

tails differ with local differences in altitude, climate, soil, and rainfall. Here farming is being reduced to a science. In other parts of the country a man sows his seed and na

into the soil to find the underlying moisture. The seed-bed is made very deep. Plowing is from sixteen to nineteen inches deep, while in well-watered regions it is only about six inches. This deep seed-bed is thoroughly cultivated to make the soil porous, the soil being reduced to a fine powder. After sowing the see

ted States only, but of the whole earth. Western Canada, a large part of Australia, the Kalahari Desert of

men all over the world to find drought-and-cold-resisting grains. They found a hard winter wheat, the most nutritious in existence, which is now growing all

er and the common alfalfas can not grow there, the problem of finding legumes has been the most serious one facing this new region; but in Siberia the Agricultural

are added to the farm lands of this continent? It means prosperity for the farmers themselves, homes for those who are now crowded i

ERE

ational Conserv

in. Report White House

of Soils. Van

rs. Dept. of Agricul

s. Dept. of Agricu

t Soils. Dept. of Agr

ept. of Agricultu

nserve Moisture. Dept. of

ton Soils. Bureau o

of Soils. Bureau

t of Soils. Bureau of Soi

Agricultural Experi

rogen Problem. Yearbook Dept.

orage Crops. Yearbook Dept.

arbook Dept. of Agri

ation. Yearbook Dept. of

nds. Yearbook Dept. of A

rbook Dept. of Agri

t Plains Area. Yearbook Dept.

Dry Farmi

e Land. J. J. Hill, Repo

th and the Fa