Agricultural journal

“ Mowing and reaping machines have ceased to be a novelty upon our plains and meadows. The natural fertilizers have been analyzed, and artificial nutrients of the soil have been contrived. The pick and pride of foreign herds have regenerated our neat stock, and the Morgan and the Black-Hawk eat their oats in our stalls. The sheepfold and the sty abound with choice blood. Sterling agricultural journals are on every farmer's table, and Saxton's hand-books upon agricultural specialties are scattered everywhere. ”

“ The books to include as well as to exclude from a select list will depend upon the previous training of the man making the purchase, the character of the farming to be pursued, and, to some extent, to the section of the country where the farm is located. Any bookseller can secure catalogs issued by 12 firms making a specialty of publishing agricultural books. For the average reader these catalogs are sufficient to enable one to make intelligent purchases.
Every farmer should take one or more agricultural journals. ”

“ We have mobilized all the agricultural experts in the country. We are issuing a mass of simply written pamphlets explaining better methods of farming."
(I have seen scores of these pamphlets on forestry, potatoes, turf, rotation of crops, and so on, besides the agricultural journals issued by the Commissariat and sent in large quantities to the villages.)
I told Sereda I had heard that the peasants were refusing to sow more than they wanted for their own needs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The best agricultural papers and magazines which favor each farmer's peculiar interest, whether of stock, or fruit, or dairy, or grain, should be subscribed for and read, and preserved for future reference. Our best farmers can do a great deal, by contributing facts of their own knowledge, to raise the standard and worth of such periodicals. ”

“ An agricultural report at this season, can neither embrace a great variety of objects, or those of much interest; and we are not disposed to supply the appetite of our readers with novelty at the expence of accuracy. The information we have collected from our correspondents, enables us to state, that the wheat crop does not rise to the flail so well as it generally does ”

“ Agricultural surveys, geological surveys, and skillful chemical analyses of the soil and its products have been made for, now, a series of years. A Hitchcock, a Dana, a Jackson have applied science to agriculture. Pamphlets, books, and widely circulated newspapers have diffused this knowledge. Agricultural societies, state and county; farmers’ meetings for discussion, such as are held every winter in Boston, have awakened the mind of farmers, and by learning to treat their soils skillfully, good wheat is raised in large quantities on soils naturally very averse to wheat. ”

“ There are five gentlemen who gave evidence regarding the average produce of wheat per acre, two of whom only depone to the quantities of oats and barley grown per acre. It is in the article of wheat alone that the evidence can enable us satisfactorily to ascertain whether, since 1814, there has been an agricultural progress or an agricultural declension. ”

“ A careful analysis of the annual volume of Agricultural Statistics for 1905 shows that in the thirty years from 1875 to 1905, not less than 49% of the area under wheat has gone out of cultivation; that for the whole of the corn crops (including wheat) , 26% less land is used than was the case in 1875. ”

“ The staple crops do not yield as largely as before, and less crude methods of using the soil must be resorted to. Manures have to be applied, and the rotation and selection of crops practised. Meat and dairy products, vegetables, fruits, and the miscellaneous agricultural articles, must take their place in rural economy. ”

“ Besides the booklets named above, from time to time there will be issued other interesting agricultural booklets pertinent to crops in all parts of the United States. Future issues will treat such subjects as cowpeas, soy beans, peanuts, velvet beans, rice, sugar, cane, silos, feeds and feeding, weeds, insects, etc. ”

“ With a few honorable exceptions of standard periodicals, we scarcely take an agricultural paper which does not contain most absurd stories gravely indited without a word of comment. Now, it seems to us that agricultural papers ought not to be the common sewers of news, full of waste and refuse matter; but registers of rigid facts and scientific expositors of the principles deducible from facts. Farmers are at fault also in the matter. ”

“ I think if farmers would take more interest in agricultural papers, instead of having their children fooling away their time on novels or comic stories and pictures, it would be better for both old and young. Let the parents buy a microscope and let the young folks examine insects and fungi of all kinds, and let them write their experiences down in a book whenever there is leisure time. Or let them write to The Prairie Farmer something in the line of farming, be it agriculture, horticulture, or about raising and caring for stock. ”

“ The brief essays in this book were written for the Toronto Globe and Farmer's Advocate. As they deal with all kinds of farm work at different seasons of the year they have been cast into the form of a journal in order to give the volume some degree of continuity. The man who wishes to learn the human side of farming may find something to interest him, but the man who consults these pages for scientific information does so at his peril. ”

“ On other soils of a sandy nature, or rich in calcium carbonate, such a fertilizer would have little value. The analyst in giving an opinion respecting the commercial value of a fertilizer, must be guided not only by the source of the material, its fineness or state of decomposition, and its general physical qualities, but also by the nature of the crop which it is to nourish and the kind of soil to which it is to be applied. ”

“ These lands represent soil of about the lightest texture upon which wheat can be economically produced under the climatic conditions which there prevail. They contain from eighteen to twenty-five per cent of clay, and are much more retentive of moisture than the best tobacco lands. This type is about the limit of profitable wheat production. These soils will maintain about twelve per cent of water during the dry season. Garden truck is so late in maturing on these lands that there is often a glut in the market when the crop matures, and the crops often do not pay the cost of transportation. ”

“ While not a newspaper, the Grain Growers' Guide was a highly specialized journal for the Western farmer, aiming frankly at educating him to be the owner of his land, his produce, his self-respect and his franchise; to make him self-thinking and self-reliant and to defend him from unjust slurs.
The editorial responsibility of carrying out such a programme in the face of existing conditions required a well chosen staff. In Roderick McKenzie, then Secretary of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association, the farmers had an editor upon whose viewpoint they could depend ”

“ The oldest direct comparison between these two systems of farming, so far as the writer has learned, is on the experiment fields of the University of Illinois, where as an average of six years the yield of corn has been 87 bushels an acre in grain farming and 90 bushels in live-stock farming, the same crop rotation being practiced. Where wheat was introduced the average yield for six years was 43.1 bushels in grain farming and 43.5 in live-stock farming. ”

“ To speak entirely within bounds, it is known that fifty bushels of wheat, or one hundred bushels of Indian corn can be produced from an acre. Less than a year ago I saw it stated that a man, by extraordinary care and labor, had produced of wheat, what was equal to two hundred bushels from an acre. But take fifty of wheat, and one hundred of corn, to be the possibility, and compare with it the actual crops of the country. Many years ago I saw it stated in a Patent Office Report that eighteen bushels was the average crop throughout the wheat growing region of the United States ”

“ If one feels a decided call to till the soil old Mother Earth will be about as generous to him in coffee culture as in anything. Whatever cultivation one undertakes, he must wait some years to see his money come back. Even if he engages in the raising of cattle, he must wait for the calves to grow, and no calf will grow faster than he pleases, unless you stuff him with expensive grain. With corn, wheat or barley, you must prepare the soil carefully each 108season, and after the crop is cut and stacked, the land is there again, bare as before. ”

“ Near the streams is a rich black soil; a sandy loam on the bench lands; and grazing lands on the bluffs. Dry farming has been satisfactorily tried on the uplands, and the experiment station encourages this method. In the order of relative importance the crops are corn, wheat, oats, barley and hay. ”

“ Besides the time when the work of putting in the crop is done, I thought it looked fine when the first showing of green spread over the field, and every time I have passed it seemed good to see a few inches added to the growth, and it listens fine to have real farmers say with a wise look as they sweep the oat field with a critical eye: "Those oats of yours have a splendid colour." In fact when things are going well it strikes me that a good field of grain looks good at any time. But this dip into real farming is making me see crops with other eyes. ”

“ The corn harvest now being gathered in our country will reach two thousand millions of bushels. The mind staggers under such ponderous figures and quantities. Our wheat fields are hardly less productive; our potatoes and rice and oats and barley and grass, the products of our cattle and sheep, and, in short, everything that our soil above ground yields ”

“ The effect of consumption of homegrown wheat on interstate commerce is due to the fact that it constitutes the most variable factor in the disappearance of the wheat crop. Consumption on the farm where grown appears to vary in an amount greater than 20 per cent of average production. ”

“ The crops to be raised are maize, oats, wheat, clover, alfalfa, timothy, potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages, garden peas and apples. The animal products sold will be chiefly butter fat, wool, mutton, veal, pork and eggs. This is neither a long nor complex list of products. They are all adapted to the farm which the writer has in mind. Yet the man who operates this farm to the highest success will need to have a knowledge of agronomy, or the raising of field crops, of horticulture, animal husbandry, 125 including poultry husbandry and dairying. ”

“ On the Bonanza farms of the Western States machines are in use which cut off the heads of the wheat, thrash out the seed, and bag it ready for delivery, as they travel round and round the field. Such machines of course leave the straw standing where it grew, and there it is subsequently burnt. 22 Since wheat is grown every year, few animals are kept beyond the working horses. ”

“ For the past twenty years, leading men of science, who, alive to the importance of increasing the world's supply of wheat; have given close attention to statistics which seemed to indicate that the yield per acre, of the wheat fields in all countries, is steadily decreasing. ”

“ Except in regions of large-scale production, wheat is usually grown in rotation with other crops; for a nurse crop for grass seeding; and as a cover crop to prevent soil erosion and leaching. Some is sold, some kept for seed, and a percentage of the total production much larger than in areas of specialization is consumed on the farm and grown for such purpose. Such farmers, while growing some wheat, may even find the balance of their interest on the consumer's side. ”

“ In the autumn, after the wheat has been harvested, the straw is burned and the land is ploughed. In the following April when the soil is dry enough to harrow, the seeds, after being carefully selected and thoroughly cleaned, are planted. For the harvesting a great deal of new machinery is purchased every year. One of these huge machines can cut and stack in one day the grain from a hundred acres of land. ”

“ A great deal of land in the old settlements of this State has been exhausted by a too frequent repetition of the wheat crop, and is now being employed as pasture for sheep and cattle. After remaining in grass for a few years, this land will be in excellent condition for producing wheat, especially when fertilized with that plentiful supply of barn-yard dung which the raising of stock always produces. ”

“ The vast field of agriculture, forestry and irrigation has become the subject of an extensive scientific literature. No special branch has been left untouched: irrigation and drainage, forestry, the cultivation of cereals, of leguminous and tuberous plants, of vegetables, of fruit trees, of berries, of flowers and ornamental plants; fodder for cattle raising; meadows; rational methods of breeding cattle, fish and poultry and bees, and the utilization of their excrements; utilization of manure and refuse in agriculture and manufacture ”