Food crop

“ If nature has set limits to the produce of this grain to the acre, and if our farmers have come up to that limit, there is no use in their trying to do any better. But if their crop is four fold behind what it ought to be, they will feel courage to reach out for a better mode of cultivation. Vegetables collect food from the atmosphere, and from the soil; and different plants select different articles of food from the soil, just as different birds, beasts, insects, etc., require different food. One class of plants draws potash largely from the soil, as turnips, potatoes, the stalk of corn, etc. ”

“ Any vegetable, in its proper latitude, will flourish in a soil which will yield it an abundance of food; and decline in a soil which is barren of the proper nutritive ingredients.
A practical, scientific knowledge of these fundamental facts, will give an intelligent farmer, in grain-growing latitudes, almost unlimited power over his crops. A good [Pg 204] cook knows what things are required for bread; he selects these materials, compounds them to definite proportions—adding, if any one is deficient; subtracting, if any one is in excess. Raising a crop is a species of slow cooking. ”

“ When due regard is paid to the selection of varieties, and cultivated in a proper soil, maize may be accounted a sure crop in almost every portion of the habitable globe, between the 44th degree of north latitude and a corresponding parallel south. Among the objects of culture in the United States, it takes precedence in the scale of cereal crops, as it is best adapted to the soil and climate, and furnishes the largest amount of nutritive food. ”

“ Necessity of Purchase.—The necessity of buying plant-food in the form of commercial fertilizers is a mooted question in any naturally fertile agricultural region just so long as crop yields do not drop to a serious extent. The natural strength of the land and the skill that enters into the farming are important factors in determining the profitableness of recourse to purchased plant-food. ”

“ We know enough, however, to be sure that there is a great advantage in waiting until there is a sufficient accumulation of available plant-food in the soil to produce a large yield, before sowing a crop that requires much labor. ”

“ Indeed, the cultivation of the soil for the production of food may be considered as one of the first steps in his civilization. Among the foods he cultivated were grains, and from the earliest times to the present day they have been the main crop and have formed the chief food of people wherever it is possible to produce them. ”

“ Barley, oats, spring wheat, potatoes and vegetables are grown, as well as pears, applies and cherries in the cultivated sections. Stockraising is quite an extensive industry, for the hay-crop, the abundance of prairie-grass and the white sage-brush furnish food-stuffs for the entire year. ”

“ The crops that will give us the most protein. It is the farmer's business to grow all the grass and forage that his farm animals need. He ought never to be obliged to purchase a bale of forage. Moreover, he should grow mainly those crops that are rich in protein materials, for example, cowpeas, alfalfa, and clover. If such crops are produced on the farm, there will be little need of buying so much cotton-seed meal, corn, and bran for feeding purposes.
4. The crops that produce the most. We often call a crop a crop without considering how much it yields. ”

“ We may for this reason alone look forward to the increasing importance of vegetable growing and fruit raising; but there is a more obvious and perhaps more direct reason. There is in the production of vegetables, at least, a method of satisfying the dietetic needs of an increasing population. The employment of a part of the area now in cereals and forage crops 163 for the production of potatoes, cabbages, legumes, roots and tomatoes is one of the most ready means of increasing the food supply. ”

“ Thus we have tobacco soils, trucking soils, wheat and corn soils. Dairying can be most profitably followed in sections where crops like cowpeas, clover, alfalfa, and corn are peculiarly at home. No one should try to grow a new crop in his section until he has found out whether the crop which he wants to grow is adapted to his soil and his climate. ”

“ This large group of plants, the members of which are so closely related as to be quickly recognized as such, contains many of the most valuable of all cultivated plants. It not only furnishes the cereals, namely: wheat, rye, corn, oats, barley and rice, which supply the world with the larger part of its starchy food, but clothes the pasture and meadow of the farmer with the herbage so essential to the sustenance of his live stock. There is a deep and weighty truth in the familiar expression: “All flesh is grass.” ”

“ The plant is a laboratory where life converts into nutritive matter the manure from [76] our stables and poultry-yards. A cart-load of dung becomes at the farmer’s pleasure, after passing through one sort of plant or another, a crop of peas or beans, a basket of fruit, or a loaf of bread. Hence this fertilizer is a very precious thing which nothing can replace and which must be utilized to the very utmost. The nourishment of us all depends on it. Enriched with this fertilizer, the soil produces, we will say, a first harvest of wheat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whence came this flat land agriculture of grass and grains? The origin of wheat, barley, and many of our important food plants is shrouded in mystery; but we know that our present agriculture is based primarily on cereals that came to us from the unknown past and are a legacy from our ancient ancestress—primitive woman, the world's first agriculturist. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This meant that all of the farm manure and other refuse that could be secured from the entire farm or hauled from the village, together with what commercial fertilizer the farmer was able to buy, would not enable him to keep more than ten acres of land in a state of productiveness that justified its cultivation. Tobacco, corn, wheat and cowpeas were the principal crops. Corn was the principal article of food, with wheat bread more or less common. The cowpeas and corn fodder usually kept one or more cows through the winter when they could not secure a living in the brush. ”

“ In other words, a given area of land cropped with cereals and legumes will support a population more than three times as numerous as that which can be sustained on the same land devoted to the growth of cattle. Moreover, the corn-land will produce, almost without extra cost, a considerable quantity of animal food, in the form of pigs and poultry, from the offal or coarser parts of vegetable produce which is unsuitable for human consumption. ”

“ When green, it is a fine feed for milch-kine; and when ploughed, is a fine preparation for the land. It fattens pigs with great economy, and, passed through the mill, is, with carrot, a capital feed for work-horses. The seed is excellent food for poultry, and, when ground, makes good bread.
1018. To keep Crows from Corn.—Take a quart of train oil, and as much turpentine and bruised gunpowder; boil them together, and, when hot, dip pieces of rags in the mixture, and fix them on sticks in the field. About four are sufficient for an acre of corn. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our farmers do not appreciate the benefits of having green food for their animals during the winter season. Being blessed with that royal grain, the Indian corn, they do not realize the importance of the provision of roots which is so great a feature in British husbandry; but they have yet to learn, and they will learn, that for us, and under our conditions of labor and climate, they can do still better, and produce still greater results with a combination of hay or straw, corn meal and apples, all properly prepared by means of steam or hot water. ”

“ In selecting these homestead farms, the emigrant can have any temperature, from St. Petersburg to Canton. He can have a cold, a temperate, or a warm climate, and farming or gardening, grazing or vintage, varied by fishing or hunting. He can raise wheat, rye, Indian corn, oats, rice, indigo, cotton, tobacco, cane or maple sugar and molasses, sorghum, wool, peas and beans, Irish or sweet potatoes, barley, buckwheat, wine, butter, cheese, hay, clover, and all the grasses, hemp, hops, flax and flaxseed, silk, beeswax and honey, and poultry, in uncounted abundance. ”

“ Next to the soil itself, the farmer's most important sources of plant food are the farm manures. But most farms do not produce these in sufficient quantities to keep up the plant food side of fertility. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The farmer in the humid country cannot control the amount of starch in potatoes, sugar in beets, protein in corn, gluten in wheat, except by planting varieties which are especially adapted to the production of the desired quality. The irrigation farmer, on the other hand, can produce this or that desirable quality by the control of the moisture supply to the plant. He can hasten or retard maturity of the plant, produce early truck or late truck on the same soil, grow wheat or grow rice as he deems advisable. ”

“ Earlier in the season we changed work with the horses, so as to provide the food needed for them and the cattle during the winter, and the surplus was sold for "rascal counters," with which we can get the things not grown on the farm that we need for [Pg 323] ourselves. Now, however, we are putting away that part of the produce which we shall need for home consumption. Apples are being stored, potatoes pitted, celery and cabbage trenched, and other vegetables protected for the winter. I say that I understand this part of the harvest better than the other and I'll tell you why. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”