Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/372

358 or place him in a better position to overcome the evils of the intense competition to which he is subjected, to urge upon him the dangers of soil-exhaustion from the loss of the elements of fertility in the products sold from the farm. Profitable farming can only be practiced when the surplus products of the farm can be disposed of at remunerative rates in the markets of the world; and these products must of course contain chemical constituents that might, under proper conditions, be looked upon as elements of fertility. But of what use are elements of fertility if they can not be converted into products that can be sold and made to contribute to the legitimate income that is the object of the farmer's labors? It is a false assumption in economic science that the sale of a product is to be deprecated as a positive loss to the means of production; but farmers are not alarmed by such sensational claims, as the fallacies of the proposition are readily detected.

American farmers will continue to sell grain and animal products of various forms as long as there is a demand for them outside of their farms, and this is of course the only available resource of profitable production; but they need not fear the evils of soil-exhaustion from this source, notwithstanding the warnings of alarmists who overlook the complex compensating agencies of Nature, and fail to recognize the real sources of diminished production. The history of agriculture and our knowledge of science agree in teaching that the causes of diminished productiveness that are often noticed and referred to as indications of soil-exhaustion, can not be exclusively attributed to the loss of constituents removed from the soil in the crops sold from the farm, but rather to the failure to conserve the available elements of fertility, and keep them in active circulation, by a judicious system of cropping and soil management.

If the fertilizing constituents of the barn-yard manure which are now wasted were utilized by being converted into farm products of marketable value, the gross agricultural exports of the United States might be more than doubled without making our soils appreciably poorer in any of their essential constituents.

It must be admitted, if the figures already given are approximately correct—and there is good reason to believe that they understate rather than exaggerate the real facts of the case—that the disposition made of the residues of the farm is of far greater importance in the farming of the future than the aggregate of soil constituents contained in the products exported.

Under the present conditions of production the problem for the farmer to solve is. How can the sale of farm products be increased without diminishing the productive resources of the farm? For many obvious reasons the purchase of commercial fertilizers can not be admitted as the constant factor required in