CROP MANAGEMENT The rotation of crops.
Crop management is a scheme, not a lot of practices. An important part of it is the rotating or alternating of crops on given areas. This phase of the subject may now be given a general treatment, inasmuch as it is not fully treated as to underlying reasons in other articles.
All crop management. and crop rotation in particular, has been greatly changed by the introduction of machin ery. Larger areas of cereal crops can now be grown because of the use of the self-binder as compared with the cradle and sickle. Larger areas can also be handled in intertilled crops, and those that require much heavy labor in the harvesting. Pictures of some of the old American tools will contrast this fact (Figs. 104 to 119) by suggest ing some of the kinds of devices that were formerly in use and the former state of invention in farm machinery.
On the other hand, the present scarcity of acceptable farm labor is tending to reduce the area of crops that require much care. Wherever grass is a foundation crop, the tendency is to grow less of the tilled crops.
The term "rotation of crops" is used to designate a system of recurring succession of plants cover ing a regular period of years, and maintained on alternating fields of the farm. Its purpose is primarily to increase the productiveness of the various crops by conserving the fertility of the soil and eliminating weeds, pests eases. All farmers practice rotation to some extent, but usually it is imperfect and unplanned. In most parts of the northern states it is common practice to have oats follow corn, and wheat follow oats. Such indefinite practices are perhaps to be called modes or systems of cropping rather than crop rotations. The real rotation of crops is a more purposeful and orderly procedure ; in grass growing and cereal-growing countries it assumes alternations of grain crops, grass crops, intertilled crops. It would be better if all writers used the term rotation of crops to designate only well laid systems or courses.
Definite rotation is usually a practice of old and well-settled countries, where the virgin fertility of the soil has been somewhat depleted and crop enemies are numerous. In most new countries,
the husbandry is at first haphazard and unscientific. The land is exploited. Fertility is seemingly exhaustless and little attention is given to conserving it. The land is robbed, and the robber moves on. But when the land must be used over and over again, century by century, the farmer looks to the future and lays out a plan that will cause his land to increase in value. The rotation and diversification of crops are subjects of increasing importance in North America.
These remarks are well illustrated in the depletion of lands once devoted to tobacco and cotton. Wheat production constantly moves westward. George Washington wrote to Arthur Young, in England, as follows, in l787: "Before I undertake to give the information you request, respecting the arrangements of farms in this neighbourhood, I must observe that there is, perhaps, scarcely any part of America, where farming has been less attended to than in this State [Virginia]. The cultivation of tobacco has been almost the sole object with men of landed property, and consequently a regular course of crops have never been in view. The general custom has been, first to raise a crop of Indian corn (maize) which, according to the mode of cultivation, is a good preparation for wheat ; then a crop of wheat ; after which the ground is respited (except from weeds, and every trash that can contribute to its foulness) for about eighteen months ; and so on, alternately, without any dressing, till the land is exhausted ; when it is turned out, without being sown with grass-seeds, or reeds, or any methOd taken to restore it ; and another piece is ruined in the same manner. No more cattle is raised than can be supported by lowland meadows, swamps, &c. and the tops and blades of Indian corn; as very few persons have attended to sowing grasses, and con necting cattle with their crops. The Indian corn is the chief support of the labourers and horses. Our lands, as I mentioned in my first letter to you, were originally very good ; but use, and abuse, have made them quite otherwise.