ial fertilizers that have been
bought by Georgia farmers? The facts are that while some profit can
be secured from the use of high-priced mixed commercial fertilizers
for cotton with lint at 10 cents a pound, they scarcely pay their
cost when used for corn, even at Georgia prices.

Working Mind and Muscle

But Georgia spends money enough for fertilizers to double the
average crop yields of the entire state within a decade if wisely
invested in positive soil enrichment in rational permanent systems
of agriculture.

Why should not the farmers of Georgia and other Southern states be
brought to understand and to apply the results of those most
valuable investigations conducted by the Louisiana Experiment
Station on typical worn upland soil of the South, which show that
the use of organic manures produced upon the farm-farm manure,
legume cover-crops and cottonseed meal--re-enforced by liberal
additions of phosphorus, increased the crop yields from 466 to 1514
pounds per acre of seed cotton, from 9.4 to 31.4 bushels of corn,
and from 16.4 to 41.8 bushels of oats, as the averages for nineteen
years?

This experiment occupied 6 acres of land, but when the results are
applied to a 60-acre farm it is found that the gross returns from
the untreated land would amount to $595.76, while the net returns
from the soil treatment amount to $956.08 annually, both the value
of produce and the cost of fertilizer being computed at the prices
that were used by the Louisiana Experiment Station.

Thus the combined _gross_ earning power of both land and labor is
less than $600 a year; while the brain work applied to the
improvement of the soil on the same farm brings a net return of more
than $950. Once in three years 50 pounds an acre of kainit was also
applied. This would contain only 5 pounds of potassium, or less than
would be required for one 7-bushel crop of corn.

These are the oldest experiments in the United States in which
organic manures have been re-enforced with phosphorus, and the only
addition suggested for the profitable improvement of this system is
ground limestone on acid soils. These results only emphasize the
fact that the average farm yields small returns upon the capital and
labor invested, but the statement may well be repeated that the
intelligent improvement of his soil, in systems of permanent
agriculture, is the most profitable business in which the farmer and
land owner can engage.

AUTHOR'S NOTE