Conrad H. Hammar

Intensity and Land Rent an Overlooked Aspect of Rent Theory

W TRITERS of recent textbooks in beginning economics V have been prone to imply that rent reflects the intensity of land use. The accepted scheme of the relationship of land rent to intensity is illustrated in figure 1 in which there is a symmetrical rise (or fall) in the intensity of the application of labor and capital to varying grades of land; the highest grade being in all instances that which is most

A Post War Program for American Agriculture

AMERICAN agriculture has been exploitative of fertility over AtV virtually its entire history. The program for the future must be in simplest terms a reversing of that process so that fertility is rebuilt. If in the past, therefore, farmers have been engaged in minimizing fertility such a new program may by contrast be called one of maximizing fertility. Actually the program would be complex in both design and ends though chiefly it would consist in restoring to the lands to be retained permanently in farming the fertility elements that have been so unwisely removed in the past. Chiefly, there will be required great supplies of lime, phosphate, potash and nitrogen together with smaller amounts of other fertilizer elements. However, in some locations it is not fertility so much as some other aspect of land productivity that has deteriorated. Over the great grazing ranges of the intermontane regions, for instance, fertility is often still not a limiting factor. In areas where erosion has been and is severe the restoration of fertility must be preceded or accompanied by terracing, contouring and other erosion control measures. In still other areas it is chiefly some condition of internal soil structure that must be ameliorated so that the land must be kept in sod for long periods and tillage restricted to relatively short intervals. Soils are, furthermore, by no means alike in their capacity to store up the elements of fertility for later exploitation and the program must be adapted to that fact. Likewise, there must be adaptation of the program in relation to the main crops to be produced in particular areas. The maximum fertility for one kind of crop or rotation is not the same as that which would give maximum results in yields and reserves for other crops and rotations. In the South particularly, attempts to build up the nitrogen content of the soil are sure to be of small avail though lime, phosphates and potash may be better retained. The program for Dixie must, therefore, be one of building up reserves of these latter three and creating supplementary stock-pile reserves of nitrogenous