Hopkins, Cyril G.

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Essentials in large food production

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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
II 
Agricultural Experim~nt St'!_tion 
URBANA, ILLINOIS, MAY, 1917 
CIRCULAR No. 197 
ESSENTIALS IN LARGER FOOD 
PRODUCTION 1 
BY CYRIL G. HOPKINS 
CHIEF IN AGRON OMY AND CHEMISTRY 
For greatly enlarged food production the two factors of primary 
impo.rtance are sufficient labor to perform the necessary farm work 
and sufficient soil fertility to make the larger crop yields possible. 
Labor has been drawn away from the farms in recent years to such 
an extent as to compel the adoption of every possible expedient to get 
the farm work done. Thus in modern farming a team driven by 
one man commonly consists not of two horses, but of four or six, with 
plows, disks, harrows, rollers, seeders, and other farm implements 
or machines of corresponding size. Many farm boys have been 
necessarily kept out of school, and in 1916, for the first time during 
the years of the present century, the attendance at the Illinois Col-
lege of Agriculture decreased, altho the student attendance in the 
University as a whole has continued to increase. 
In the formation of a great military force for the defense of right 
and liberty, there must be no thought of preventing the farm people 
in this country from bearing their full share in active military ser-
vice, but where men are taken from the farms for such service there 
must be some system of replacing on the farms the full labor equiv-
alent, _measured in terms of efficiency, or else food production will 
suffer; and by failing to make definite provision for ample supplies 
of food we may invite ultimate disaster by cutting off our most vital 
resources at the fountain head. 
1An address iielivered before a conference of the Mayors of Illinois, at Chicago, 
April 27, 1917. 
2 
And we must not be so foolhardy as to follow a plan whose suc-
cess requires a termination of war in six months. On the contrary, 
let us fully understand that we may need to produce more ·food in 
1918, and still more in 1919, than in 1917. Whether the war con-
tinues for six months or for six years, the United States must be 
depended upon for a larger and larger supply of food for both 
Europe and America; and when peace is declared, all humanity must 
then be made to rejoice because America shall have in store an abun-
dant food reserve which may at once be used to relieve the suffering 
and starvation in all countries, whether classed as friend or foe dur-
ing the conflict. 
The control of all who may be called directly into the Nation's 
service must lie with the federal government. Congress already has 
under consideration a plan to assign to the service of food production 
on federal furlough those who may be better fitted for such service 
than for immediate activity in the military; and it is not . within the 
province of the mayors of Illinois to provide the men for either 
branch of service. 
But in soil fertility there is a second factor of no less importance 
in food production, and no greater opportunity could come to the 
mayors of this Commonwealth than now exists to exert their influ-
ence to bring about the production of larger and larger supplies of 
food by positive and p·ermanent systems of soil enrichment. 
You should know that the University of Illinois is operating forty 
soil experiment fields well distributed over the state on the important 
soil areas; that more than sixty counties in Illinois have already been 
covered by detail soil survey in which every kind of soil on every 
farm is investigated; and that thousands of samples representative 
of all important soil types have already been analyzed. These inves-
tigations have·furnished the information needed in the present crisis. 
• .J , : ~ 
The basic facts which must underlie the rational enrichment of 
Illinois soils are already established. Briefly they are these-: (1) 
All of our common, or normal, soils are not only devoid of limestone, 
but they show some acidity, and in large areas, especially in southern 
Illinois, they are very sour. (2) They are deficient in the element 
phos:r.horus. (3) They are becoming deficient in organic matter, or 
humus. 
To double the crop yields of Illinois would require only the use of 
the limestone which is found in almost measureless deposits in all sec-
tions of the state; the application of fine-ground · phosphate rock, 
which is easily secured from the great natural deposits in Tennessee; 
and the production (thus made possible) and the proper utilization 
of home-grown organic matter, such as the clovers and other legume 
crops, crop residues, and farm manure. In the production of the 
legume crops, the nitrogen . is secured from the ·free and inexhaust-
ible supply in the air; and the decaying organic manures have power 
to liberate the potash contained in all normal soils in practically 
inexhaustible amounts. 
3 
What should the mayors· of Illinois do to help insure food pro-
duction? The proper answer to this question seems simple and cer-
tain: Erect in every town a storehouse for limestone and phos-
phate, in which from ten to a ·hundred carloads can be kept on hand 
ready for the farmers to haul and apply whenever the conditions of 
the roads and fields and farm labor permit. When the. farmer brings 
a load of produce to town, let him haul back a load of limestone or 
phosphate. 
There is much talk by the townspeople about cooperation with 
the farmers. Here is an opportunity to do something more than talk 
-something of substantial character, something which looks toward 
enriching the country in order that the increased produce may in 
time increase the general prosperity of both the country and the town. 
Limestone and phosphate rock are natural fertilizing materials, 
which are made ready for use simply by grinding, and they may be 
kept in storage indefinitely with no deterioration in condition or 
quality. They are the only materials the farmer needs to buy for 
the rational economical improvement and permanent preservation 
of fertility in normal soils. 
Nitrates, potash salts, and sulfuric acid are all" needed in the 
manufacture of munitions, but their use in fertilizers is unnecessary 
for normal soils and is also unprofitable to the general farmer, altho 
1hey may have a proper place in market gardens, especially where 
the supply of manure is insufficient. 
The average yield of wheat in Illinms is about 16 bushels per acre, 
but an increase of 191j2 bushels has been produced by limestone and 
phosphate rock on the University Farm at Urbana. The actual acre-
yields, as an average of four field trials each year for four different 
years, were 28.2 bushels where home-grown organic manures were 
used alone, 43.5 bushels with manure and phosphate rock, and 47.7 
bushels with manure, phosphate, and limestone. 
These results are secured where soil improvement is well under 
way; but whether the yield is 16, 28, or 48 bushels per acre, the 
labor and other expenses are the same for the plowing and prepara-
tion of the seed bed, the same for the seed and seeding ; arid, in the 
case of corn, these expenses are also the same for cultivation, 
whether the land is impoverished or enriched. While to decrease the 
labor on the farms would probably effect a proportionate decrease 
in production, to. increase largely the labor supply for this year, over 
and above that for last year, would by no means insure a correspond-
ing increase in production. The larger increase ~n crop yields can 
be achieved only by soil enrichment. 
As an average of four trials each year for the first four years, the · 
yield of wheat on the experiment fields in Frankli~ and Saline 
counties on the poor land of southern Illinois was 5.7 bushels per 
acre where organic residues were plowed under, 17 bushels with the 
residues and limestone, and 19 bushels with residues, limestone, and 
phosphate. The best yields in these trials were 8.5 bushels with the 
organic residues, 29.8 with residues and limestone, and 32.9 bushels 
with the organic matter, limestone, and phosphate. In the first year 
of these experiments the yield of corn was increased more than 12 
bushels per acre by the use. of ground limestone. 
On my own farm in southern Illinois I have harvested 35Y2 bushels 
of wheat per acre where manure, limestone, and phosphate rock were 
applied, and only 11¥2· bushels where the farm manure alone was 
used. 
On the University Farm in Champaign county the average acre-
yield .of corn for the last ten years has been 28.8 bushels on one field 
and 79.5 bushels on another field. The soil is the same-the common 
$200 corn-belt prairie land. The two fields were plowed and pre-
pared at the same time and planted with the same kind of seed. 
They were cultivated alike, watered by the same rains, and warmed 
by the same sun. But why this enormous difference in acre-yield-
from less than 30 to nearly 80 bushels, as the average for a decade 1 
The answer is found in two words: rotation an<l fertility. The lower 
yield is from corn grown every year on the same land with no restor-
ation of fertility, while for the higher yield the corn is grown in a 
good crop rotation including some legumes, and the soil is enriched 
with limestone, phosphorus, and home-grown organic manures ap-
plied only in such amounts as can be produced from the crops actu-
ally grown upon this land. 
These methods of positive permanent soil enrichment are now 
thoroly established and are practiced by many of the progressive 
and most successful farmers, but the one great difficulty in bringing 
about their more rapid and more general adoption is the impossibility 
of securing shipments when the local conditions permit" their appli-
cation. 
It is for this reason that I urge you, Mayors of Illinois, to go home 
and induce your Chambers of Commerce or Commercial Clubs to pro-
vide commodious storehouses in which ground limestone and fine-
ground phosphate rock can be kept and supplied to the farmers at any 
and all times ; and let me urge, too, that these material~ be furnished 
to farmers at the actual cost of bulk carload shipments, leaving the 
city people to secure interest on their investment from a country made 
richer by their effort and influence, remembering that worn-out soil 
yields no purchasing power to the farmer, no freight to the railroad, 
no business to the · merchant, no food to the consumer. 


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