UIHistories Project: A History of the University of Illinois by Kalev Leetaru
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Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1876 [PAGE 212]

Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1876
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212 so as not to require extra help at one time and be out of business at another. Another important consideration is to produce articles fitted to the market. If the market is distant coarse grains and heavy bulky articles should not be raised except for consumption on the farm. All such can be converted into beef, pork and wool or something that will not be absorbed in the cost of transit. But the most important matter is to adopt a rotation of crops in connection with animal husbandry that will preserve the . fertility of the soil. The soil is the farmer's bank and if he does not keep his deposit account good his drafts will not be honored. The cereals and all crops that mature the seed are exhausting crops and if constantly raised without manure or rotation with crops not exhausting will deteriorate and ruin any soil. The yield of corn on the prairie farms of Illinois has been reduced by forty years of constant production fully fifty per cent. Another term of like duration and like practice will render the soil nearly worthless for the production of corn. Crops which do not mature the seed, as the root crops and grasses, are the renovating crops, and with the manure made on the farm should preserve the fertility of the soil. It costs no more to raise a good crop than a poor one and the balance sheet of a farm in a high condition of fertility will show a marked contrast with one from an exhausted one. A recent English writer on political economy kindly volunteers the advice that as this country has # a rich virgin soil we should do nothing but raise the cereals, export them and let England do t h e manufacturing. When our farmers understand that when they do nothing but raise and export corn and wheat they are selling the realty of the farm and reducing themselves and their country to poverty, they will be slow in taking the Englishman's advice. If such a course is pursued the rich soil of the prairie region, like the cotton fields of the south, must eventually be abandoned for some other virgin soil, if such can be found. One of the most vital questions in farm economy, and one of all others not to be disregarded, is the preservation of the fertility of the soil. There are many minor branches of farm production that, though small in amount individually, yet in the aggregate constitute an important element of success. The garden, the dairy, the fruit, the poultry, with many others can be more or less pursued according to the number, ages and circumstances of the family. Each individual should have their appropriate department and be held responsible for its proper care. Such care becomes a most excellent discipline and calculation of the young, and it is from those thus trained our most successful agriculturists are produced. These considerations apply with equal force to both sexes, and the farmer's daughter who is reared without such discipline, without business care and neither learns nor practices any branch of farm or household duties, should never aspire to the honorable position of a farmer's wife; in fact such a one is unfit to be any one's wife. Those minor pursuits can be made to pay the family and farm expenses and thereby save intact the avails of the staple crops. But if the grain, beef, pork, wool or other staple crops are to be drawn upon for all the necessaries and little luxuries which persons living in idleness are ever aspiring to,