220
AGRICULTURE
these ten years we exported 24,600,000,000 pounds, worth $2,250,000,000. The amount exported was 68'3 per cent, of the entire production, leaving only 31‘7 per cent, for home consumption. The average yield per acre during the last ten years was only 181 pounds and the average New York price was nearly 9 cents per pound, making the average value per acre nearly $16.
Most interesting and instructive are the results of the Fertilizers ^nvesfioafi°ns made by the Department of Agri" culture in 1897 with regard to the use of fertilizers upon cotton. They show that no plant responds
[united more promptly or more generously to judicious fertilization than does the cotton plant. The results obtained upon about fifteen hundred representative cotton plantations in the five Atlantic coast States—North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, where fertilizers have been longest and most used—were tabulated according to the cost of fertilizer per acre. Six classes were formed, ranging from under one dollar’s worth to six dollars’ worth and over of fertilizer. The planters who spent an average of 74 cents for fertilizers per acre made an average profit of $4.62; those who spent from $1.00 to $2.00 for fertilizers made a profit of $5.09; from $2.00 to $3.00, a profit of $ .34; from $3.00 to $4.00, a profit of $>5.91; from $4.00 to $5.00, a profit of |>7.96; from $5.00 to $6.00, a profit of |58.76; and those whose fertilizers cost them $6.00 and more per acre made a profit of $12.51. The word profit was used in this investigation to mean “ the excess of returns over expenses, including the theoretical one of rent.” “ Some small charges, such as insurance, repairs, renewals, and supervision, were omitted.” “It is evident from the figures above that the point of diminishing returns was not reached, when the crop was profitable, at any degree of fertilization.” The total number of plantations reporting losses is only 15 per cent. “The returns from the planters who suffered a loss, while at first seeming to indicate a conclusion contrary to the above, in reality do not, because their crops were subject to abnormal conditions
COTTON /N THC UN/TED ST4TTS.
Fig. 2. and were partial failures, the cause generally having been pounds of potash, and 20 pounds of phosphoric acid in a drought.” “ In cases of the planters who lost on their suitable form, made on fair average land, containing a crops the loss is greater as the cost of fertilizers is greater ; reasonable amount of humus, such, for example, as would but had climatic conditions been favourable, the loss without fertilizer produce 250 pounds of lint per acre, would have been a profit.” Co-operative experiments by would usually double this crop. Cotton-seed meal, the selected farmers, directed by the experiment stations, offal of fisheries, abattoirs, <fcc., are the commonly used show that the application of 60 pounds of nitrogen, 20 sources of nitrogen; the superphosphates are made from
