Agricultural research

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For example, if the staple crop of the locality is wheat or a certain type of tobacco, select the soil best adapted to this staple crop, and another soil, if possible, in the same locality, representing considerable area of land upon which this staple crop cannot be successfully grown on account of the inferior yield, quality, or the time of ripening of the crop. The soil sampled should be, or should recently have been, under actual cultivation in the crop or crops best adapted to it, so that the real agricultural value of the land can be accurately known. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Great skill, ingenuity, and success in cattle breeding, and in drainage, have resulted, in England, from a long series of experiments, extending through many years; and great and wonderful progress in the discovery and analysis of soils and manures. The scientific men of France and Germany have also added much to this invaluable information of how to get more bread and meat from the earth, and do much, in their researches in the direction of pomology and entomology, to increase the agricultural knowledge of the world. ”

“ Here are two systems of crop-rotation as practiced at one or more agricultural experiment stations. Each furnishes an ideal plan for keeping up land.
In these rotations the cowpeas and clovers are nitrogen-gathering crops. They not only furnish hay but they enrich the soil. The wheat, corn, and cotton are money crops, but in addition they are cultivated crops; hence they improve the physical condition of the soil and give opportunity to kill weeds. The grasses and clovers are of course used for pasturage and hay. This is only a suggested rotation. Work out one that will meet your home need. ”

“ The fundamentals of the new rural economy are to secure maximum productiveness on the agricultural lands, as a whole, by a comprehensive utilization of a great variety of fertilizers, and, by studying the needs of the soil, to apply to them the particular fertilizers best adapted to their nature. ”

“ Agricullure and Allied Industries.—The diversity of soil and climate leads to a great diversity in the agricultural produce. The chief drawback to farming in the midland and upper districts is the considerable proportion of stony ground, and, in some cases, the lack of running water. The area of land under tillage is less than a twentieth of the whole surface, the crop most extensively grown being maize or “mealies.” This is universally grown by the natives and forms their staple food; it is also grown by the Indians, and by the white farmers for export. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Agriculture, to which we owe our means of subsistence, is an art intimately connected with chemical science; for although the common soil of the earth will produce vegetable food, yet it can only be made to produce it in the greatest quantity, and of the best quality, by methods of cultivation dependent upon scientific principles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Right methods of farming, without which no agricultural country such as this can hope to remain prosperous, or even to escape eventual poverty, are not complicated and are within the reach of the most modest means. They include a study of soils and seeds, so as to adapt the one to the other; a diversification of industry, including the cultivation of different crops and the raising of live stock; a careful rotation of crops, so that the land will not be worn out by successive years of single cropping ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In raising corn, it is natural that the lands which are easiest and cheapest worked should be first subjected to the plough; it is not till implements are improved, skill increased, capital accumulated, and population presses, that the heavier lands will be rescued from perennial grass, and made to produce that greatly increased amount of food for both man and beast, which they are easily capable of yielding. ”

“ Organic farming using long rotations, including deeply rooted green manures developed to a high art. Turner maintained a productive organic dairy farm using subsoiling and long rotations involving tilled crops and semipermanent grass/herb mixtures. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE REORGANIZATION of American agriculture began with the passage of the Experiment Station Act in 1887. This act marked the beginning of a comprehensive and systematic application of experimental science to agriculture and was the signal for great activity in research work in all lines of agricultural endeavor. The Experiment Stations are really the foundation of the new agriculture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A more rational system of cropping now began to take the place of the thriftless and barbarous practice of sowing successive crops of corn until the land was utterly exhausted, and then leaving it foul with weeds to recover its power by an indefinite period of rest. Green crops, such as turnips, clover and rye. grass, began to be alternated with grain crops, whence the name alternate husbandry.
The writings of Arthur Young (q.v.) , secretary to the Board of Agriculture, describe the transition from the old to the new agriculture. ”

“ Water is supplied from the sky, or from springs and streams; and little more than the most ordinary capacity for observation is required to determine when it is present in sufficient quantity, when in baleful excess. But who, unaided by Science, can decide whether the soil does or does not contain the elements requisite for the luxuriant growth and perfect development of Wheat, or Fruit, or Grass, or Beets, or Apples? Who knows, save as he blindly infers from results, what mineral ingredients of this or that crop are deficient in given field, and what are present in excess? ”

“ And this difference should be kept in mind by all classes of cultivators as the basis of operations in tillage, cropping, and the order and character of rotations. The first thing to discover in the cropping of a farm is the kind of vegetation for which the land is best adapted to insure, in a run of seasons, fairly profitable results. If the soil is unfit for cereals, then it is sheer folly to sow any more corn than may be needful for convenience, as, for example, to supply straw for thatching and litter, and oats for horses, to save cost of carriage, &c. ”

“ Agricultural colleges were established to spread scientific cultural methods so that the food supply might keep pace with the demands of an increasing industrial population, research work in the realm of agriculture was vigorously prosecuted by numerous experiment stations under State and Federal control, and the period closes with the establishment of a separate system of finance designed to place the agricultural capitalist on a par with the commercial capitalist in the money markets of the world by modilizing and standardizing the basis of his credit. ”

“ Agriculture, in its season, is prosecuted with such a degree of diligence, however, as suffices to supply the few simple wants of the mountaineer. The soil of the valleys and river bottoms, which are cleared by setting fire to the long grass and brushwood, generally yields a large increase of every species of grain. ”