Thus, if a quarter-section of such land as the Bloomington Experiment Field has been farmed for thirteen years after the manner of the untreated plot, and is now valued at $175 per acre, an adjoining quarter-section of the same type of soil given scientific treatment for the same period may be valued at $316 per acre. In other words, the two 160-acre farms, having precisely the same value thirteen years ago, are now valued at $28,000 and $50,560 respectively, a difference of $22,560, an amount sufficient to purchase 128 acres of the untreated farm at $175 per acre. If invested in United States liberty bonds, at 41 per cent interest, this increased value would yield an annual income of $1,062.
At the Odin Experiment Field in Marion County, on poor gray prairie land, scientific soil treatment changed the yield of wheat, in four years, from 11.6 bushels per acre to 29.5 bushels, an increase of 17.9 bushels per acre, or 154 per cent.
Corn production was increased from 38.3 bushels to 61.3 bushels, or 60 per cent.
In the same county, in 1908, Dr. Cyril G.
Hopkins purchased a tract of 300 acres known as Poorland Farm and began giving it scientific treatment. In 1913 he harvested 1,278 bushels of wheat from 36 acres of this land, a yield of 351 bushels per acre. An untreated strip of 12 acres in the same field yielded 111 bushels per acre. This is a gain of 24 bushels per
acre, or 208 per cent. This particular field had been agricul turally abandoned for five years prior to Dr. Hopkins' purchase. As it was purchased for $15 per acre, the single crop of 1913 had a value at least twice as great as the purchase price of the land. On the same farm the yield of wheat in 1917 was 7 .7 bushels per acre on land which had been treated with manure alone, while the yield on land treated with manure, limestone, and raw rock phosphate was 44.1 bushels per acre. At the government price of $2.20 per bushel for the 1917 wheat crop, this yield had a value of $97 per acre.
At the Alomence Experiment Field in Kankakee County on peaty swamp soil, the corn cm) of 1903 yielded 3.9 bushels of corn per acre on the untreated plot; while the adjoining plot, to which potassium had been added, produced 72.7 bushels per acre.
With such results as these, obtained under ordinary field conditions in many parts of the state, the era of scientific farming in Illinois is fairly begun, and a system of permanent and profitable agriculture may be promptly developed on every farm of the state if all landowners and land operators apply the scientific knowledge placed at their disposal by the researches of those who have spent many years in the study of Illinois soils.