Agricultural tool

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the highest degree of perfection yet reached in applying the horse power to harvesting, fully nine-tenths of the power is expended by the animal in carrying himself and dragging the machine over the field, leaving certainly not more than one-tenth to be applied directly to the only end of the whole operation -- the gathering in the grain, and clipping of the straw. When grain is very thin on the ground, it is always more or less intermingled with weeds, chess and the like, and a large part of the power is expended in cutting these. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is to be hoped that the steam plow will be finally successful, and if it shall be, "thorough cultivation" -- putting the soil to the top of its capacity -- producing the largest crop possible from a given quantity of ground -- will be most favorable to it. Doing a large amount of work upon a small quantity of ground, it will be, as nearly as possible, stationary while working, and as free as possible from locomotion ”

“ A decrease in the world supply of wheat has resulted in a very large increase in the price of that commodity. The position of all agricultural products indicates a better balanced supply, but we can not yet conclude that agriculture is recovered from the effects of the war period or that it is permanently on a prosperous basis. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The stones and small rocks have been removed, leaving the surface of the soil smooth, and allowing the use of the sub-soil plow, which with the under-drains have more than doubled the productive power of the farm. Sufficient labor is employed to cultivate with improved tools, extensive root crops, and they invariably give a large yield. The grass land produces a yearly average of 21⁄2 tons of hay per acre. From 80 to 100 bushels of corn, 30 bushels of wheat, and 45 bushels of oats are the average of the crops reaped. ”

“ The agricultural systems of political economy will not require so long an explanation as that which I have thought it necessary to bestow upon the mercantile or commercial system.
That system which represents the produce of land as the sole source of the revenue and wealth of every country, has so far as I know, never been adopted by any nation, and it at present exists only in the speculations of a few men of great learning and ingenuity in France. ”

“ The portion of the farm reduced in productive power for the moment goes to grass, while the labor and fertilizers are concentrated upon the fields that are broken for grain and vegetables. The removal of all the crop at harvest, and probably the pasturing of after-math, are the only matters of interest that the fields, depleted by cultivation and seeded down to grass, have for the owner until the poor hay yield and the need of a sod for corn draw attention again to them. ”

“ Then a great machine called a "header and thresher" is driven into the field and sweeps through miles and miles of bending grain, cutting swaths as wide as a street, and harvesting, threshing, and leaving a long trail of sacked wheat ready to ship on the cars. Thirty-six horses draw the header, and five or six men are needed to attend to this giant, who bites off the grain, shakes out the kernels, throws them into sacks and sews them up, all in one breath, as you might say. The harvesters work from daylight to dusk, and three-fourths of our wheat crop is gathered in this way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They must find the cheaper land, and that is no longer confined to the west. They must be where coarse materials, inedible to man, are found, and that is on eastern as well as on western farms. Their office will not be the conversion of crops into manure, but the conversion of coarse materials into human food in the form of meat or milk. This is the trend, and while the consummation may happily be far in the future, its consideration helps us to an appreciation of the facts regarding nature's provision for maintaining the productiveness of the soil. ”

“ An American reader does not need to be told that farm work has been greatly changed by the introduction of improved tools and machinery. Even an implement so old and apparently so simple as the plow will do now better work with half the force formerly required. Cultivating and harvesting machines of various kinds spare land and labor. The introduction of artificial fertilizers has given new freedom and efficiency to the agriculturist. ”

“ The rotation of crops means—taking a surface crop, such as wheat, oats, maize, &c., off the land, and then ploughing and planting a root crop, say turnips, potatoes, &c., &c. One of the best ways to manure a field impoverished by successive cropping without rest or manure is by sowing broadcast some such crop as peas, vetches, turnips, or any quick growing tender leaf plant, and when it is a few weeks old, or when the plants have leafed out well, plough it under and leave the field fallow till the following spring. ”

“ It is true that, if the [Pg 153] crop is sold, and it is desired to maintain the fertility of the soil, the full amount of the ash must be applied, either before or after the crop is grown; but, in the ordinary use of crops for feeding purposes, a large part of the ash will exist in the excrements of the animals; so that the judicious farmer will be able to manure his land with more economy than if he had to apply to each crop the whole amount and variety required for its ash. ”

“ They have long realized that much time is required to transform organic matter into forms available for plant food and although they are the heaviest users in the world, the largest portion of this organic matter is predigested with soil or subsoil before it is applied to their fields, and at an enormous cost of human time and labor, but it practically lengthens their growing season and enables them to adopt a system of multiple cropping which would not otherwise be possible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The surface is level; there is a rich, deep soil and an abundant rainfall. It has therefore become one of the foremost regions of the world in the production of corn, wheat, pork, dairy-stuffs, and general farm produce. The evolution of farming machinery is the direct result of topographic conditions. A level, fertile region naturally invites grain-farming on a large scale. This, in turn, must depend very largely on the ability of the farmer to plant and harvest his crops with the minimum of expense and time.
Hand-work in harvesting and planting has almost wholly given way to machine-work. ”

“ Summarizing, the fertilizer industry, as we have pointed out, is an important factor in the maintenance of the human race, of this and other continents, in that (1) it supplies plant food to balance up the plant food in the soil and to make up the deficiencies which have occurred as a result of continuous cropping; (2) assists in educating the farmers to conserve the fertility of their soils by employing scientific methods of farming; (3) it makes use of waste products of other industries which have formerly been destroyed, and returns them to the soil in the form of food for future crops. ”

“ But the truth is, the planting of apple and pear trees in fields is no extravagance, rather an economy, the fruit they produce exceeding in value the corn they damage, whilst the puzzling line of poplars growing beside canals and rivers is the work of the Government, every spare bit of ground belonging to the State being planted with them for the sake of the timber. The crops are splendid partly owing to the soil, and partly to the advanced system of agriculture. ”