OCR Text |
Show A DANGER. In the spring of this year, when the people of this country became really awake to the fact that a food short age was among the possibilities of thi coming year, the call went out fron official Washington for a record pro uuction of food and feed crops. Tht ai.swer to that call was prompt and decisive. We are informed that the output of the farms and gardens and orchards was never greater than this year. This is gratifying and shows the readiness with which our people rise to an emergency. But tiere is a danger that may grow out of the situation sit-uation that must be guarded against. Production of the food crops is destructive to the soil fertility. Over a great part of our country our farmers, farm-ers, in order to maintain the strength of their soil, have had to resort to crop rotation, and that frequently when they could have realized a ereater immediate profit to have stuck to certain straight crops. Es-pecially Es-pecially are the four great staples wheat, corn, oates and potatoes extremely hard on our soils. . Now the probabilities are that the . prices of all these crops will continue high for sometime to come, and their production will be a great temptation to our people. To a reasonable extent ex-tent this will be necessary, but it should not be carried to an extreme. Soil once depleted is hard to restore as an experienced farmer can testify. As an evidence of the result of adhering to the staple food crops, we have but to point to certain sections of the great grain belt of northern Illinois and Indiana. Since the ad- . vent of high prices, farmers of this section have virtually surrendered their farms to the production of wheat, corn and oates. The old es-Lablished es-Lablished rotation has been abandoned, abandon-ed, with the result that the land Is being depleted at a really alarming rate. We must preserve soil fertility. We must not be guilty of killing the; goose that lays the golden egg. |