Cash crop

“ These figures reveal something of the tense strain and of the terrible burden which is being carried by these people, over and above that required for the maintenance of the household. The tenant who raises one crop of rice pays a rental of $23.89 per acre. If he raises two crops he pays $31.58; if it is upland field, he pays $13.52. To these amounts he adds $10.33, $21.52 or $13.45 respectively for fertilizer, seed and other expenses making a total investment of $34.22, $53.10 or $26.97 per acre, which would require as many bushels of wheat sold at a dollar a bushel to cover this cost. ”

“ The cost of extra harvesting will be more than repaid by the value of the extra fodder, and the increased cultivation and manuring are lasting benefits, which can be charged, only in small part, to the current crop. Therefore, if it will pay to plow, plant, hoe and harvest for 30 bushels of corn, it will surely pay much better to double the crop at a yearly extra cost of $5, and, practically, it amounts to this;—the extra crop is nearly all clear gain. ”

“ Soils are of every grade: some, which if cultivated, might replace the capital, but give no profit; some give a slight but not an ordinary profit; some, the ordinary profit. That is, “there is a point up to which it is profitable to cultivate, and beyond which it is not profitable to cultivate. The price of corn will not, for any long time, remain at a higher rate than is sufficient to cover with ordinary profit the cost of that portion of the general crop which is raised at greatest expense.”188 For similar reasons the price will not remain at a [pg 245] lower rate. ”

“ In my opinion, the fruit farmer would require capital in like proportion; for, while many of the small fruits can be grown with less preparation of soil and outlay in manure, the returns come more slowly, since, with the exception of strawberries, none of them yield a full crop until the third or fourth year. I advise most urgently against the incurring of heavy debts. Better begin with three acres than thirty, or three hundred, from which a large sum of interest money must be obtained before a penny can be used for other purposes. Anything can be raised from a farm easier than a mortgage. ”

“ Suppose three-quarters of the apple growers of the country, either through ignorance of the principles of their industry or through shortage of money with which to pay their debts, should be forced for a considerable period to accept a price for their crop so low that after paying current bills they were obliged to neglect their orchards absolutely, without plowing, fencing or spraying. ”

“ But unfortunately it too often happens that the struggling farmer cannot have a free hand in marketing his corn. In many cases he must sell at once 17 after harvest to raise the necessary cash to buy stock for the winter’s feeding. This causes a glut of wheat on the market in the early autumn, and the price at once drops. In other cases the farmer has bought on credit last winter’s feeding stuffs, or last spring’s manures, and is bound to sell his wheat to the merchant in whose debt he finds himself, and to take the best price offered in a non-competitive market. ”

“ It exhausts the soil. About two-thirds of the wheat of the United States is consumed outside the county in which it is raised.
(2) It requires a large quantity of land to produce a competence. Land must be low in price, or the interest on the money invested in the land will consume the profits. The relation of crop to income is suggested by comparing the gross returns from an acre of potatoes or tobacco with an acre of maize. The average gross income during a decade was, from an acre of maize, $9.50 ”

“ If the mind will consider the immense amount of produce in the way of fruits and vegetables which, near a city, will command the highest prices, and which at a distance are an entire loss, a conception can be readily formed of what they amount to in dollars and cents.
Land in Illinois and Iowa can be purchased for a dollar an acre, but corn is at times of so little value as to be consumed for fuel. The wheat crop is annually decreasing in its acreable product, because no one values or applies manure. ”

“ In that country where stock thrives care free, where a poor man's 32 potatoes saved can return him 18 bushels, and 2 1/2 bushels of wheat sown yield 350 bushels in a season; or where an average crop of wheat on irrigated lands is 50 bushels to the acre; the farmer's part is hardly to be despised. Certainly it will not be under a continuance of the present prices current of the region,—wheat at $4 the bushel, and flour $12 the hundred, with a ready market. ”

“ The costsand profits of cultivation must be at the very minimum to yield any surplus for rent, and the condition of the cultivator must be a hard one. He has other sources, no doubt, which may help him—his vines and oil—but in the nature of things it is impossible that he can get any profit from his wheat crop, until by such a change of system as will increase its yield. ”

“ During harvest, and at piecework, more money was earned, and it always pleased me that I could pay much better prices for piece-work among the hops than for piece-work at wheat-hoeing or on similar unremunerative crops. The reason is obvious: the hoeing of an acre of wheat, a crop which might possibly return a matter of £10 per acre, takes no more manual effort than the hoeing of an acre of hops, where a gross return of £70 or £80 per acre is not unusual, and is sometimes considerably exceeded. ”

“ If they judge by the market today, they are in danger of two errors: first, of overestimating the future demand, which may be satisfied before the new crop comes; second, of diverting from ordinary staple crops too large a portion of the crop-raising force. Common experience has taught that a high price of hops or onions or broom corn has almost certainly wrought a reduction of the price for succeeding crops below the normal cost. Still larger foresight is needed with reference to the raising of live stock, which requires more than a single season's investment of capital. ”

“ The product of a field near his house and barn costs less exertion than the product of a more distant field. In the second place, he is likely to have chosen for his first efforts in crop raising the land most readily yielding its fertility in crops. If he extends his operations to less productive soil, he must work more for the same product. In the third place, if a certain amount of work upon a certain field will give him twenty bushels of wheat, he must give a good deal more than twice as much work in the way of tillage and manufactured fertilizer to make a crop of forty bushels. ”

“ The profit in farming lies first of all in securing large crop yields. It costs forty bushels of corn per acre in Illinois to raise the crop and pay the rent for the land or interest and taxes on the investment. With land worth $150 an acre, it will require $8 to pay the interest and taxes. Another $8 will be required to raise the crop and harvest and market it, even with very inadequate provision made for maintaining the productive power of the soil, such as a catch crop of clover, or a very light dressing of farm fertilizer. ”

“ Not only are these people extremely careful and painstaking in fitting their fields and gardens to receive the crop, but they are even more scrupulous in their care to make everything that can possibly serve as fertilizer for the soil, or food for the crop being grown, do so unless there is some more remunerative service it may render. Expense is incurred to provide such receptacles as are seen in Fig. 37 for receiving not only the night soil of the home and that which may be bought or otherwise procured, but in which may be stored any other fluid which can serve as plant food. ”

“ The cost of growing the crop, the specialized farm machinery and equipment needed, the availability of labor, the distribution of the seasonal labor demand, the time of the critical cultural practices or of harvesting, the potential market, and the expected price of the saleable product must all be considered.
The staple farm crops of the region are often preferable to specialty crops, particularly from the labor standpoint. Corn, wheat, oats, potatoes, and legumes can all be grown with a minimum of labor and the use of power machinery. ”

“ Too often they are bound by lien or mortgage, or else they have run up a heavy bill at the country store, and when the crop is made and ready for market, they are obliged to sell forthwith. Generally too, this is the very time when prices are lowest, and so the planter is obliged to part with the fruits of his labor at the most unfavorable rates, and allow the middlemen to pocket the profits. It is only by careful economy and prudent management, on the part of each planter for himself, that this evil is to be corrected. ”

“ It is further true that year by year, with larger areas of land under cultivation, the increasing volume of agricultural products, cotton, corn, and wheat, calls for a larger volume of money supply. This is especially noticeable at the crop-harvesting and crop-moving period. ”

“ In other words, 100 bushels of corn from one acre would yield practically the same profit as fifty bushels per acre from six acres, simply because it requires the first forty bushels from each acre to pay for the fixed charges or regular expense.
"It is not the amount of crop the farmer handles, but the amount of actual profit that determines his prosperity. It requires profit to build the new home or repair the old one, to provide the home with the comforts and conveniences that are now to be had in the country as well as in the city; to send the boys and girls to college ”

“ When one can market his crops to animals on the farm at their cash value, and at the same time retain for his fields four fifths of all the fertility, he is like a manufacturer who can use much of his raw material over and over again. The value is in the manure, and full appreciation is lacking only because a majority of farms do not provide for careful saving of its valuable constituents. ”

“ The second has to do with the journey from mill to consumer. The first is usually called the Raw Cotton Market, and the second the Cloth Market.
The planter begins his work early in the spring. His crop is dependent upon his ability to secure and pay for the labor to work it, for the tools and machinery which are used, and his own expenses. Small planters are rarely sufficiently in funds to enable them to go through the growing season without financial assistance. They must borrow money, and they usually borrow it with the growing crop as a basis. ”

“ Is it wise for a man to put his yearly support or gains upon one crop and that one crop depending upon six or seven contingencies? If there is a large crop and high prices, he makes largely. Eighty acres at thirty bushels the acre yields 2,400 bushels, worth, say, seventy cents, or $1,680 gross receipts. Elated beyond measure, the lucky fellow buys some forty acres more of cleared land, reduces his pasture, shaves of a portion from his meadow, plants a few acres only of corn, and puts every inch he can command into wheat ”

“ Taking the farmer's capital into account, we are probably within the mark when we assert that £26 an acre, on the average, must be laid out on new land, before a single bushel can be reaped from it; and, even when ready for a rotation, an additional preparation of two or three years is necessary to bring it into a state for bearing wheat. Now, is there any speculator so insane as to risk such an expenditure on the possible chance of an occasional and simultaneous failure of the crops on the Continent? ”

“ It is an incident to the unsound basis of production which still prevails. So long as a very large portion of our standing timber has not cost the owner much in either price, protection, taxes and interest, some of it will be put on the market at a low price in order to carry a milling business through a depressed period, to realize money, or for other exigency reasons. So may a wheat grower lose money on one or two years' crops. But if in the long run the world refuses to pay for wheat what it costs to grow it, wheat will not be grown. ”

“ The farmers of this country are compelled, by the present system, to pledge their next year's crop to the local wheat factors who control the elevators. The purchase price is determined by the factor. The farmer receives a certain number of bushels of 'seed' wheat from the factor, agreeing to repay him with two or two and a half bushels of the coming crop; a large percentage of the remainder of the crop is pledged to the local store-keeper for the goods that the farmer must have to do his work and to live upon. ”

“ This high price of corn immediately raises the profit of farming stock and labour somewhat above the ordinary rate of profit in other employments. This as immediately creates a competition. The demand for farms becomes greater. The landlords are enabled to let their land higher, till farming profit comes again on a level with the profit of the general business of the country. Here then we are again in the very situation we were in before. Agriculture is a little more animated for a few years, till things find their proper level ”

“ With the same outgo for [pg 256] labor he may find the profits of two successive years wide apart. One year has granted the fortune of good crops with fair prices, while the other has yielded him a half crop when the prices of his product in the world are low. Possibly the improved machinery in wheat raising, applicable to the great farms of Minnesota, Dakota and California, has caused him to bring a costly product into close competition with a cheap one. ”