Cereal crop

“ Thus the cereal crops, when grown in rotation, yield more produce for sale in the season of growth than when grown continuously. Moreover, the crops alternated with the cereals accumulate very much more of mineral constituents and of nitrogen in their produce than do the cereals themselves. By far the greater proportion of those constituents remains in circulation in the manure of the farm, whilst the remainder yields highly valuable products for sale in the forms of meat and milk. ”

“ The thorough and prolonged soaking to which land is subject when under rice is in itself of considerable value to succeeding crops, and in the reclamation of heavy clay-lands in the Headquarters district my experience has been that as a first crop there is nothing to equal this cereal. ”

“ Take, for instance, the single product of Indian corn which forms one of the staples of Kentucky. It is the most natural and spontaneous of our cereal products. It ought to give in our country an annual yield of 1,500,000 bushels, or three times the whole wheat crop. It is little inferior to wheat in nutrition, and costs less than one-half on the seaboard and much less than one-half on the farm. It can be cooked by those who consent to learn how, into many delicious forms of human food. It is the most valuable sustenance of animal life. ”

“ In the tropics, however, wheat will not thrive at low elevations, but rice, corn, sorghum and various millets form the great cereal crops, their relative importance varying in different countries.
The grasses proper grow upon our meadows, pastures, fields and in the woods and are only used as food for cattle. ”

“ In the United States, corn is the name applied to the seed of the maize plant, which is a highly developed grass plant that forms the largest single crop of the country. The seeds of this plant grow on a woody cob, and are eaten as a vegetable when they are soft and milky, but as a grain, or cereal, when they are mature. Corn is native to America and was not known in Europe until Columbus took it back with him. ”

“ There are, again, other lands which, if not irrigated, will still produce the ordinary cereal crops to a more or less uncertain extent, but which, if water be used artificially upon them at appropriate times, are thereby fitted to and will produce much more certain and larger crops without it, and will be also rendered capable of producing fruit and grapes of all kinds, of first-rate quality, and in very large quantities. ”

“ However, it is not going to be a situation without hope if the tillers of the soil do their part, but they have got to do that if their environment compels them to still keep on raising cereals. Now that the United States has taken the lead as a wheat raising country, I regret to state that I can see no better way out of it than for them to still keep on raising this cereal. But what we want to consider is how [366] that can be done and maintain the fertility of the land for some years to come. ”

“ The production of cereals is the most important branch of agriculture, comprising corn, wheat, oats, barley, rye, buckwheat, and rice. Since the building of the trunk railroads, by which the western territory was given access to a market, the progress of cereal production has been extremely rapid, nor does there seem to be any observable slackening. With the introduction of improved varieties of spring wheat, cereal production is being pushed further up into British Canada and our own Northwest. ”

“ So rich is the soil, so favorable are the normal climatic conditions, that wheat attains a high degree of perfection; while, besides its growth of cereals, including a phenomenal annual corn-crop and all the farm-products found in the other states, it raises cotton, hay, barley, potatoes, all kinds of vegetables, broom-corn, castor-beans, sorghum, peanuts and melons, in addition to a wide variety of fruits, including peaches, grapes, strawberries and many other small fruits. Of late years its annual corn crop has been not far short of 95,000,000 bushels and its wheat crop 25,000,000 bushels. ”

“ But if the grain is removed, and nothing resupplies the drain of phosphates which it makes from the soil, the soil will in due time, according to the original quantities in the soil, cease to yield grain, although the straw may be admirable. But if both straw and kernel were every year burned upon the [Pg 150] field, as grass and its seed is upon the prairies, wheat would grow for a thousand years in succession. The same is true of corn, of potatoes, and of any annual crop. When the annual growth is restored to the soil, it is repossessed of all its treasure which had been loaned for a season. ”

“ Very early in his history man learned the value to himself of the seeds of the cereals. He discovered that they may be kept a long time without injury; that they contain a great amount of nutrition for their bulk; that they are easily prepared for food; that, when planted, they give largest return. Thus, we see, the advantages the plant mother had developed for her young, man has turned to his own use. That the food put up for the young plant is so protected and constituted as to endure unhurt for a long time gives the cereal grains their keeping quality. ”

“ One of the most beautiful, and at the same time useful, crops in the world is that of maize, which feeds not only vast numbers of human beings, but also countless flocks and herds, the latter eating the green stalks as well as the ripened grain. The United States alone produced no less than 2,523,648,312 bushels of this cereal in 1902, as against 987,000,000 bushels of wheat, and 670,000,000 [326] bushels of barley. Now, maize has a very tough stalk, often 10 feet high and an inch thick, which cannot be cut with the ease of wheat or barley. So a special machine has been devised to handle it. ”

“ The red varieties yield the largest amount of grain, but the white the whitest flour.
Wheat is preferred to the other cereal grasses as an article of food on account of its containing a larger quantity of flesh-forming matters. The flour also may be rendered very white by separating it from the husks, or bran, and the fruit is much more easily separated from the chaff than is the case with the other cereals. The proportion of flesh and force-producing to those of force-producers only, is more nearly adjusted to the requirements of the system in wheat than in any other food. ”

“ Since the Civil War the corn acreage has steadily increased. Wheat, the next most prominent cereal, has only one-fourth as large an acreage. The acreage devoted to oats and rye each decreased one-half from 1890 to 1900. The yield per acre of all these crops is very low. The acreage of hay and forage crops is comparatively small. The two crops which yield the largest receipts from sales are cotton and tobacco. ”

“ The plot upon which wheat has been continuously grown, year after year, for more than 50 years, without manure of any kind, the land merely being kept free from weeds, is in the highest degree remarkable, for it has given over the whole period an average yield of between 13 and 14 bushels of dressed grain per acre, which is more than the annual average yield of the crop as grown in the United States and several other leading wheat countries. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It will produce cotton, sugar cane, Indian corn, rye, barley, oats, rice, buckwheat, peas, beans, sweet potatoes and all common garden vegetables. The cabbage does not form a compact head as it does at the north. Wheat will not grow in this country. The stalk will run up rank, but the ear will not fill with plump kernels. Last December, while I was there, flour sold on the river Brazos, for ten dollars a barrel; and in the interior, [Pg 180] it sold for fourteen. Corn grows well, and is quite a sure crop when planted early—about the first of February. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our yield of wheat, however, was but 19,000,000 tons, while China's output of rice was certainly double and probably three times this amount from nearly the same acreage of land; and notwithstanding this large production per acre, more than fifty per cent, possibly as high as seventy-five per cent, of the same land matures at least one other crop the same year, and much of this may be wheat or barley, both chiefly consumed as human food. ”

“ In growing such dry land crops as barley, beans, buckwheat or dry land rice the soil of the field is at first fitted by plowing or spading, then furrowed deeply where the rows are to be planted. Into these furrows fertilizer is placed and covered with a layer of earth upon which the seed is planted. When the crop is up, if a second fertilization is desired, a furrow may be made alongside each row, into which the fertilizer is sowed and then covered. ”

“ But if the land is planted one or more years with a vegetable which takes a different kind of nourishment from the soil, time is allowed for the chemical changes constantly going on in the ground to produce a supply of the food required by the first kind of crop. In the cultivation of the beet-root for sugar-producing, it must follow the cereals, such as wheat, rye, and barley, but, to be profitable, not oftener than every third year. ”

“ Every acre of land must be manured, and upon a large scale at Newera Ellia that is impossible. With manure everything will thrive to perfection with the exception of wheat. There is neither lime nor magnesia in the soil. An abundance of silica throws a good crop of straw, but the grain is wanting: Indian corn will not form grain from the same cause. On the other hand, peas, beans, turnips, carrots, cabbages, etc., produce crops as heavy as those of England. Potatoes, being the staple article of production, are principally cultivated, as the price of twenty pounds per ton yields a large profit. ”

“ There are many who, remembering how the Western limit of grain raising has crept westward across Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas, look for a repetition, or, more properly speaking, a continuation of this phenomenon across the remaining public domain. It is true that we are only on the borderland of plant-breeding possibilities. Spelz, or macaroni wheat, Kaffir corn, and other drought-resistant cereals are making a marvelous change in Western farming conditions, and in the certainty of crop maturity ”

“ It will never do to carry seed corn from South to North, as it will not mature in a higher or colder climate than that from which it has been taken. Even half a degree of latitude sensibly affects the maturing of the blade, and renders it an uncertain crop in our high northern latitudes. To insure an extra yield of this valuable grain, the soil must be highly manured, deeply ploughed, thorough cultivated and hoed, and top-dressed with lime, house ashes, and plaster. ”

“ In the fall, the summer's accumulation in hog-pens and barn cellars is spread upon the mowing grounds, and a liberal supply of muck carted in and spread in the bottoms of the cellars, ready for the season for stabling cattle. When this is well saturated with the drippings of the stables, a new supply is added. The accumulation of the winter is usually applied to the land for the corn crop, except the finer portion, which is used to top-dress meadow land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It does well on rather poor soil and yields heavy crops. In chemical analysis it is richer than corn in protein and carbohydrates, but also contains three times as much fiber. It is this high fiber content or woody character that makes me dubious about its silage value, in which opinion Professor Rolfs concurs. When two or three feet high it is greedily eaten by animals, and so may be a pasturage possibility. As a green feed crop it could be cut three or more times each season, when three or four feet high, and I am sure will prove a very valuable forage for the man with one or two cows. ”

“ Wheat is the most important crop and is widely distributed. In 1905 12,734,491 acres, or about 18% of the total area, produced 151,696,571 bushels of wheat, a yield of only 12 bushels per acre. The importation has, however, enormously increased since 1882—from 164,600 to 1,126,368 tons; while the extent of land devoted to corn cultivation has slightly decreased. Next in importance to wheat comes maize, occupying about 7% of the total area of the country, and cultivated almost everywhere as an alternative crop. ”