Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 18.djvu/77



Eighty-five years of farming in the Willamette Valley have enforced the old-new lesson-necessity of soil conservation. This area, one of the most productive in the world, with its ages-old store of soil wealth, yielded to the pioneers immense crops during half a century. Then the dwindling return and the retarded progress of the community brought home the ancient truth that the energies which growing plants take from land, however rich, some day must be given back; and it is better to give them back every year than every quarter or half-century.

This problem of continuous soil repair is now the uppermost one in the Willamette Valley. Farmers are learning to master the problem on these oldest agricultural acres of the Northwest. They are also coming to know the needs of local adaptation, for there are many variations of soil, drainage and altitude that must be studied to find out what treatment or what crop is best.

Speaking broadly, the chief needs are three—clover, lime and drainage, and all three together. Then, too, livestock enters into the economy of things—the respective utilities of hogs, dairy cattle, and sheep; also vetch, kale, rape, rye; apples, pears, cherries, etc. All this proves the far departure from the pioneer condition wherein grain was the staple and the stable product of Willamette Valley farms. Twenty years ago, the Willamette Valley was a heavy exporter of wheat and flour; now it is a heavy importer.