SOIL FERTILITY.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 6377, 15 July 1916, Page 4

SOIL FERTILITY.

The building up and the maintenance of the fertility of the soil is perhaps the most important question which the practical agriculturist. has to consider. It is the beginning and the ending of good farming as far as the land is concorned. Indeed, there is no need for any qualification, because farming that does not end in this is merely robbing the land, and in other words using capital as income. Bad farming will render our richest diorite soils, at least temporarily incapable of producing profitable crops—l mean, of course, in relation to the capital value of the land. On the other hand, good farming will yearly increase the value of even a naturally poor farm. In fact, it way be stated as a truism that, given "favourable climatic conditions, fertility is merely a question of good farming. Given favourable climatic conditions, and the difference between starting farming on a rich soil and on n poor one may br compared to starting a business with a good credit balance at the bank and starting without reserve •apital. The credit balance is a great help to the good business man ; but it will not save the lazy man, the spendthrift, or the bad business man from failure. In the same way a rich store of natural fertility is a big handicap to the good farmer, but it only encourages the poor farmer in his bad methods. Just, as the energetic business man makes headway in spite of his lack of capital, so does the good farmer build up the fertility of his poor farm, and after making a living and bringing up a family upon it, leaves it to his ton in a fourfold be,li<«r condition he found it.