Agricultural implement

“ The price of wheat rose to an average of 14s. per quarter, thereby encouraging tillage once more. There was steady inflation.
With enclosure of agricultural land there could be more innovation and more efficiency, e.g. the time for sowing could be chosen. It was easier to prevent over-grazing and half-starved animals as a result. The complications of the open system with its endless quarrels and lawsuits were avoided. Now noblemen talked about manure and drainage, rotation of crops, clover, and turnips instead of hunting, horses, and dogs. The breed of horses and cattle was improved. ”

“ On these farms every advantage of machinery, and every discovery in agricultural science, should be utilised [140] to the utmost. The crops should be carefully chosen with reference to soil and aspect—cereals, fruit, vegetables—and the culture adapted to the crop, the one aim being to obtain the largest amount of produce with the least expenditure of human labor. Whether land is most profitably cultivated in large or small parcels depends on the crop; and in the great area of the County Farm, la grande et la petite culture might each have its place. ”

“ We must extend the present facilities to educate our farmers in modern agricultural methods, such as the use of fertilizers, mechanical equipment seed selection, soil conservation, crop rotation, and other means to improve agricultural yields. ”

“ Necessity of Purchase.—The necessity of buying plant-food in the form of commercial fertilizers is a mooted question in any naturally fertile agricultural region just so long as crop yields do not drop to a serious extent. The natural strength of the land and the skill that enters into the farming are important factors in determining the profitableness of recourse to purchased plant-food. ”

“ It is preferable that they should produce farm crops instead of tree crops if the land is best adapted to agricultural use. It is an economic necessity that all lands in this country best suited for farming purposes should be tilled. Our ever-increasing population demands that every acre of land useful for growing crops should be cleared and devoted to farming. ”

“ The American farmer is learning to adapt his crop to his soil and to his market. This is the teaching of the United States Bureau of Soil Survey, in its field work and in its reports. It is the burden of the agricultural college and of the experiment station, and the agricultural explorer of the department in Washington is searching widely in aid of something fit and good to fill every arable American acre. Adaptation will increase the product of food, as will also the more intelligent and energetic use of fertilizers. ”

“ The work at the Central Research Farm is intended to confer on agriculture the benefits of the most scientific advances by the prosecution of investigations and trials under practical and accurately-recorded conditions concerning problems involved in increasing the agricultural output. Attention will be given to improvement of wheat, soil renovation, fertilising and tillage methods, rotation of crops, &c. ”

“ Irrigation certainly furnishes the ideal method for raising a varied crop, giving each crop individual treatment, serving each of thirty varieties of plants and trees with just the amount of daily moisture they individually need, so as to produce maximum products. [Pg 107] No wonder three crops in a year sometimes result, and sometimes five crops of alfalfa in the Southwest. Here we come to the highest development of intensive farming where the utmost value of agricultural science has free play and rivals the results of research and skill in any other line of human effort. ”

“ Corn will not be grown in this country unless you give it an adequate market. Admit foreign corn, and you not only put a stop to agricultural improvement in reclaiming waste land, by means of which production may be carried to an indefinite degree, but you also throw a vast quantity of the land at present productive out of bearing. ”

“ Will raising the average produce from twenty-five to fifty bushels per acre be the utmost limit to which improvement can be carried? I believe not. In conclusion, I would urge on all owners and occupiers of land, the importance of devoting at least a small field to agricultural experiments, as I think there can be no doubt that, if these are carefully and systematically made and followed up by agriculturists generally, we shall be so far from needing an importation of corn in average years that we shall have a large surplus to spare for our neighbours. ”

“ Wheat is ground at the mill. In this way functions which are necessary to the total economic process of supplying an agricultural product, become, in the process of economic development and specialization, separate and independent productive functions operated in conjunction with the agricultural function but no longer a part of it. Thus, the question as to whether a particular type of activity is agricultural is not determined by the necessity of the activity to agriculture nor by the physical similarity of the activity to that done by farmers in other situations. ”

“ Our problem, in the past, has not been to make two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before. Our problem has been to harvest and transport two bushels of wheat or two bales of cotton with the labor previously required to harvest one. Our crops have been so abundant that the agricultural problems connected with the growing of them has been secondary to the engineering 56 problems of their harvesting and transportation. The self-binder and the steam locomotive have been our achievements. ”

“ It is a rule with few exceptions that the absence of livestock on the farm is an index of gradual reduction in the productive power of the land. Generally speaking, the farmers who feed the most of their crops on the farm are maintaining fertility, and those who do not feed their crops on the farm have been making drafts upon the soil's stores of available plant-food that are evidenced in a reduction of yields. ”

“ We have agricultural explorers in every far corner of the world; and they are finding crops which have become so acclimated to dry conditions, similar to our own West, that we shall in time have plants thriving upon our so-called arid lands. We shall cover this arid area with plants of various sorts which will yield hundreds of millions of tons of additional forage and grains for Western flocks and herds. Our farmers will grow these upon land now considered practically worthless. ”

“ And it is the same excess which makes it impossible to find sufficient surfaces on which it can all be employed in the cultivation of kitchen-garden vegetables, with whose demands its organic constituents well agree. Were this matter extracted in a dry state, it would furnish a precious element of fertilization to a large agricultural interest; and we might preserve it without difficulty and without loss, and transport it at will to apply it to crops of all kinds. ”

“ Again, a great amount of "locomotion" is spared by thorough cultivation. Take fifty bushes of wheat, ready for the harvest, standing upon a single acre, and it can be harvested in any of the known ways, with less than half the labor which would be required if it were spread over five acres. This would be true, if cut by the old hand sickle; true, to a greater extent if by the scythe and cradle; and to a still greater extend, if by the machines now in use. These machines are chiefly valuable, as a means of substituting animal power for the power of men in this branch of farm work. ”

“ Eventually it was necessary to increase the production of forage crops on the land under cultivation, and this led to the development of irrigation projects, first by the ranchers, and then by the Federal Government. With water for their lands and constantly improving transportation facilities, farmers were able to produce such cash crops as small grain, truck crops, sugar beets, potatoes, and peas. ”

“ These considerations, while they explain the effect and illustrate the value of green manuring, will also satisfy the intelligent agriculturist that there are methods of improving his land without the aid either of town or of foreign manures—and that he overlooks an important natural means of wealth who neglects the green sods and crops of weeds that flourish by his hedgerows and ditches. Left to [Pg 153] themselves, they ripen their seeds and sow them annually in his fields—collected in compost heaps they would materially add to his yearly crops of corn. ”

“ The productive power of normal land in humid climates depends almost wholly upon the power of the soil to feed the crop; but the American farmer does everything except to restore to the soil the plant food required to maintain permanently its crop-producing power. ”

“ Sales off the Farm.—The day is now here when the major portion of human food must be provided in grain and vegetables and fruit, and the demand for hay and grain for animals off the farm is very large. Fiber products likewise must be supplied. The draft upon the soil is heavy, but it must be good farm practice to supply bread and vegetables and fruit to the 70 per cent of our population that is not on farms. The great majority of farmers do not feed all their crops to livestock, and the amount of food-stuffs, for human beings and animals, that is now going off the farms is none too great. ”

“ The offices of the hollow straws may be performed by a system of ridging and back furrowing, having previously covered the soil with leaves, or other refuse organic material.
In high farming, where the object of the cultivator is to make a profitable investment of labor, these last named methods will be found most expedient; but, if the farmer have a large quantity of land, and can afford but a limited amount of labor, the raising of green crops, to be plowed under in the fall, will probably be adopted. ”

“ You see, sir, the range isn’t so open any more, because people are taking up the land from the government every year; and so there isn’t so much room for the cattle. Besides, we’ve been irrigating the last few years and raising wheat, because by and by almost all the cattle land that’s good for grain will be gone. ”

“ We can then free some three million hectares now devoted to marginal rice and corn growing to other uses -- to pasture, to aqua-culture and to high value crops. These efforts in agriculture must be matched by equally resolute efforts at agrarian reform. ”

“ The area devoted to such sales will grow greater because human needs are imperative. Livestock will become more and more a means of working over the material that man cannot eat—the grass, hay, stalks, by-products in manufacture, and coarse grains. The demand for meat and milk will lead to careful conversion of material into this form of food, and the animals on eastern farms will increase in number for a time, while sales of grain and vegetables grow greater. The draft upon soil fertility through sales must increase because every pound of material sold from the farm carries plant-food in it. ”

“ We think we have developed intensive and perfected systems of agriculture; but as a matter of fact, and speaking broadly, a permanent organized agriculture is yet unknown. In certain regions, as in Great Britain, the producing-power of the land has been increased over a long series of years, but this has been accomplished to a great extent by the transportation of fertilizing materials from the ends of the earth. ”

“ Not only since its inception in 1840 has this industry contributed to the supply of plant food, which in the end means human food, but it has noted the wasteful methods of agriculture being practiced, unconsciously frequent, in many parts of this country, and it has put forth continuous efforts along the lines of educating the American farmer to grow larger yields of better crops, to maintain and increase the fertility of the soil, and increase the average yield per acre. ”

“ That on the estates of the nobility the average yield of wheat amounts to what can be got from the soil without the application of manure, while on capitalistic farms the average is nearly on a par with that which is raised from fertilized land. ”

“ When the farmer raises crops for sale, and removes his grain and grasses from the land, he sells a portion of his soil; and if he does not renew in some way the saline matters taken away in his crops, he invariably impoverishes his farm. This work of exhaustion is now going on to an alarming extent, and the prolific wheat lands are to be searched for farther and farther westward as the operation proceeds. ”

“ A glance over the physical features of the country shows that the proportion of arable to grazing land is very well balanced. When proper attention shall be given to the storage of water for irrigation it will be found that each valley will have sufficient capacity to produce hay, grain, and 30 root crops adequate to the requirements of the flocks and herds that can find pasturage on the surrounding range. ”

“ The basis of this programme was the conversion of grassland to arable in order to grow crops that would give the largest and quickest return in food value and that were bulky to import. In particular it would be necessary to increase the output of wheat, potatoes and oats for direct human consumption. A large quantity of home-grown corn would also have to be diverted from animal to human consumption. ”

“ Our arid lands will be made fertile by irrigation, but they will add only a small percentage to the amount already in quasi-cultivation. Our future food supplies must be drawn largely from the six million farms now under fences. These farms must be made to yield fourfold their present product, or they will fall short, not only of the demands made upon them, but also of their possibilities. That is why I preach the gospel of intensive farming, for grain, hay, market, and factory farm alike. ”

“ Briefly stated, the guiding principle of manuring economically and profitably is to meet the requirements of the crops intended to be cultivated, by incorporating with the soil, in the most efficacious states of combination, the materials in which it is deficient, or which the various crops usually grown on the farm do not find in the land in a sufficiently available condition to ensure an abundant harvest. ”