Newspaper Page Text
The Georgian’s Weekly News Briefs Section
The Atlanta Georgian
AND. NEWS \«»'\
Being the News of Each Day of the Week in Condensed Form Specially For the Busy Man and the Farmer
ATLANTA, CJA., WEEK OF NOVEMBER 19-25, 1910
CONSERVATION OF THE FARM
Within the past few years conservation of national
resources has become one of the biggest questions of the
times. Both the national and state governments are tak
ing the issue up and working toward intelligent solution
of the many problems.
There is one big feature of conservation that has not
been stressed very much, because it was not apparently as
pressing a problem as saving timber and other natural
resources rapidly vanishing under prodigal use and waste.
That is the conservation of the soil—the building up of
the agricultural lands instead of wearing down. We are
taking vast wealth from , the soil, but are impoverishing
this source of wealth without heed for the morrow.
This phase of our national conservation is being given
serious consideration by some of our big men. One of
the forces directed along this line is Wallace's Fanner,
edited by Henry W. Wallace, who headed Roosevelt’s
country life conmiission. In a current issue appears the
following: . v , . .
We have been trying for twenty-five years to teach
farmers how to build up the farm, how to maintain fer
tility, how to so handle the farm that it will be left to
the children with its virgin fertility unimpaired, and by
their example teach them how to leave it to the grand
children still unimpaired. The man who has not dealt
honestly with his farm has not lived the riglit kind of life.
We are now going to toll fanners how to wear out the
farm, and this is a very simple process. The first tiling
to do to wear out the farm is to leave it and move to town,
get into some other business, desert it, leave it in the
hands of a tenant on a one-year lease, who does not have
any live stock. Give him a contract to get out of that
farm all that he can, to look at the fann simply from the
light of his own human self interest. You do ‘not need
to look up ^particularly poor tenant to do it. A good
tenant will do the business quite as effectively as a poor
one. If he has only a plug team, a cow, a few pigs, and
chickens, in the way of live stock, you may be sure that
your farm will wear out; but if he has a first-class team,
or two or three of them, and the best improved machinery,
it will also weai 1 out, in one sense faster, and in another
sense not so fast. This man will be apt to keep down
weeds so far as it i& to his immediate interest to do so;
otherwise not; but he will sell more fertility off the fann
than the poor farmer.
Now, if you will do this: Rent your farm on the ordi
nary lease to any sort of fanner for one year, and for any
sort of farming, and thus give him the right to get out
of it all he can, we will guarantee that the fann will run
down. We have a very interesting letter from Secretary
Wilson on this point, in which he says:
“The principal factor in the downwind course of soil
deterioration is its desertion by the owner and its occu
pancy by tenants who have no domestic animals and no
- money to buy them with, and who raise grain to sell.”
Speaking then of the wide field that comes within his
purview, he says: “The farm has been deserted, in the
East turned over to tenants, and in the South to the col-;
ored people. In both cases the land has been injured just
about as much as it could be, tlio, of course, good farm
ers can bring it back.”
Then he adds: “The process has begun in the West.
You will do them a great favor if you will show these peo
ple distinctly, and hammer it into them, that if the}' leave
the farms they must leave stock on the farms. Selling off
everything and renting the farm to a fellow who owns a
plug team, an old wagon and a poor plow is the beginning
of the process. He grows grain to sell; that is about all he
can do, tho he may have a few hogs and chickens and
maybe one cow. But the laud, suffers and begins to go
down. The practice is becoming universal out in the West
ern country. I know of no one warning that will be
more valuable to them.” ' ■ *;• ' :
Now, if any of our readers do not agree with the sec
retary and with Wallace’s Farmer about this, all they
have to do is to open their eyes and see what is going on
about them. The rented farm in the West used to be a
symbol for a fann that had been worn out. That is not so
true now as it was, for we have a lot of tenants who arc
quite as intelligent and frequently more so than the own
ers, and who, if given a chance, will maintain soil fertil
ity; but they can do so as a rule only by keeping live stock.
We are quite well aware that it is possible to keep up a
fann without live stock; but it requires a great deal better
fanning to do this than it does to keep live stock, and the
ordinary renter will not do it one .time ini ten. tit ty or a
hundred. Now, if there ever was a time . in the -world
when land owners should see that it would lie to their
interest to encourage farmers to keep live stock, it is
now. The. high prices of live stock, while justified by
present high prices of grain ip the year past, give every
encouragement to fanners to grow Uvc stock, to take tho
greatest care in breeding, and in feeding, and to haul out
the manure as a conscientious performance of duty to the
land and to the landlord.
You can not expect a man to do this, however, if he has
only a one-year lease. If you have deserted your fann by
moving to town, or if you have bought your hind on specu
lation or as an investment, then by all means secure a
renter who understands growing live stock,.aud make it to
his interest'to do so.
If farmers do not wake up they will find that the cry of
high prices will force a removal of the tariff from every-?
thing the fanner grows. No congress can withstand the
demand for cheap bread aud cheap meat; and if we are
going to maintain our home market we must do better
farming than we have been doing in the past.
Some farmer will say: “Mv land is inexhaustible.
It has grown corn .for thirty years, aud the yield is not
diminishing.” He will then cite some unusual yield in
some particular year as proof of this statement. . Now,
there is no land that will not wear out by continual grow
ing of grain for sale on the market. There are some lands
of phenomenal richness that may last twenty, thirty or
forty years: but the end comes just as certainly as to the
bank account that is drawn upon aud never replenished.
All history and all experience shows this beyond any
peradventure.
Men are just now taking every opportunity to pur
chase farms. The price of land is rising. It has done
this before in other countries and in other sec
tions, aud has fallen*afterward; aud will fall as certainly
as the years come unless .its fertility is maintained, unless
live stock is kept aud the fundamental principles of good
fanning are put in practice. There is no other- way.
I Farmers iu the West who held their lauds at $30 aud
$•10' an acre are now getting $125, $150 aud $200; and
some are dreaming that these lands will go to $500. This
is an idle dream, unless there is five-hundred-dollar fann
ing done on the land. There is scarcely a limit to the value
of land originally good, and well located that is properly
fanned, but there is a limit to the value of laud that is
improperly farmed, no matter where it may be located.
It is too late now to make a change this year from a
grain-raising tenaut to a live stock tenant; but we arc
talking about it now so as to set our land owners who have
left the farm to thinking of the future. Don’t delude
yourself with the idea that there is no limit to the possible
value of land. There is a limit to the value of any land in
which the fertility is not maintained, and that can best
be maintained by growing live stock. “