than are added by the stalks and
leaves of the crop. Therefore, cotton is a humus wasting crop, and
the continuous cultivation of this crop tends to exhaust the supply
of organic matter in the soil.

How does cotton growing affect soil texture?

Cotton growing wastes soil humus and therefore injures soil texture by
making the lighter soils more loose and open, and the heavier soils
more dense and compact.

How does cotton growing affect soil water?

By wasting humus cotton growing injures soil texture and so weakens
the water holding and water pumping power of light soils and weakens
the water absorbing power of heavy soils. Therefore the continuous
cultivation of cotton weakens the power of the soil over water, that
most important factor in crop growth.

How does cotton growing affect soil ventilation?

Continuous cotton culture, by wasting humus, injures texture and
therefore injures soil ventilation, causing too much ventilation in
the lighter soils and too little in heavier soils.

How does cotton culture affect plant food in the soil?

Continuous cotton growing wastes plant food:

Because it wastes organic matter which contains valuable plant food,
particularly nitrogen.

Because by wasting organic matter it increases the leaching of the
lighter soils and the surface washing of the heavier soils.

Because its roots occupy largely the upper soil and do not make use of
much food from the lower soil.

Because it grows only during the warm part of the year and there is
no crop on the land to check loss of plant food from leaching and
surface wash during the winter.

Because it is a weak feeder of phosphoric acid, and can use only that
which is in the most available form. In applying fertilizer to cotton
it is necessary for best results to apply at least twice as much
phosphoric acid as the crop can use, because it can use only that
which is in the most available form and the remainder is left in the
soil unused.

Continuous cotton culture then has an injurious effect on all the
important soil conditions necessary to its best growth and
development, and the result is a diminishing yield or an increasing
cost in maintaining fertility by the use of fertilizer.

How does continuous cotton culture affect the economics of the farm?

The injury to the soil conditions necessary to root growth diminishes
the yield and therefore increases the cost of production.

The poor soil conditions tend not only to d