Norwich Bulletin Newspaper, January 1, 1914, Page 18

The Great Farm Problem : Just what s it? s 1t fras 2 good many phases, that problem, and probably if 2 hundred working farmers were asked to define it off-hand they would give a good many different replies. :Bh_r, when the personal element and the yvarying conditions of individuals has been averaged and equalized, 1 think a fairly representa- tive answer might be sifted ou THE GREAT FARM PROBLEM IS=HOW TO MAKE THE FARM PAY? Not merely how to make it pay taxes and running ex- penses—not merely how te make it pay its owner derent wages and a.fair interest on his investment—not merely how to make it pay the upkeep of a home and the edueation of a growing family—but how to make it do all these things and also provide seme profit which can be banked for possible fu- ture emergencies. Isa’t that about right? FARMS THAT DO PAY. Aceording to the latest availabl tics there are about 959:000;000 acres of land in the country, and about 100,800,000 people. That is there are nine acrcs and a half for every man, womaa and chifd. New that man Nordman out in \Wiscons whose little story was.recently told in one of The Farmer’s Talks, sup- porfs his own family and those of two hired men, the year round, on sixty acres of hilly, stony, swale-y.. thin-seiled, shest=summered land which was begging a purchaser at $6 an T lhere are fifteen mem- acre when he first took it in hand bers.in.the three families. Therefore his sixty acres suppert fifteen persons—one for each four acres—and after also pay- ing him wages, and paying tax ind paying 6 per cent. in- terest.- on his investment, leave him about $2,000 a year as profit. Mr. T. E. Martin of western New York has for the last dozen years managed a farm of fifty-seven acres only, on which he employs one man the year ‘round, one man for eight months, and several additional men during the sum- mer. This farm supports them all and pays Mr. Martin fair wages, besides over 7 per cent. interest on his original in- vestment and the cost of all su ient improvments. In this case it takes a little than five acres to maintain one person. There are scores and hundreds of tered throughout the coun instances scat- WHERE ONE LARGE MISTAKE IS MADE. The simple truth is tl acres do what we could and retary Houston of the A, day: “Reckle breathless conquest of so bent on building w of us are g ou make them do. As Sec- department said, the other have been incident to our We have been ness a centers b, g great industriz every natural and artificial device that we have little thought for the very foundations of our industrial existence Of course, when the as new and the land stored with the accumulated 1 from ten thousand years of forest growth and decay, we had nothing to do ex- cept take the giits the gods had provided and go on ouf way It dida’t make much difference how we cultivated or whethe we tilled at all beyond a mere scratching of the surface—we got the crops, just the same. That's the way theyre still doing out in the wheat belt and along the frontier. We of New England are finding that this sort of farming—more appropriately described as “soil robbery”™—won't work for always. Our fathers discovered that they had got to fe tilize if they expected the grow. But, with thei ude methods, they weren't able, in spite of their manur- ing, to get the r at ndia used to. All of know by t from actual records, that the very acres we now get dwir crops upon used to produce botintiful re We draw « as the preceding generation did, and | as that generation did, but we don't g crops t ps t c turns t ior W t the r s So we are inclined, a good many of us, to declare, offhand, that the soil has worn out, and that nothing we can do will make it as productive as it used to be. That’s just where we make One Lar % The trouble isn’t in our soils, but ir e Mistake. ourselves, FACTS WHICH OUGHT TO BE AN INSPIRATION. A good mar tious. We a y of us farmers are incl quite apt to h 1ed to be a little bump- high an opinion of ve fully our ability to think straight and k hard as the facts wa rant. Some of us are opposed to everything new on general principles, and some of us don't take kindly to advic Our New England hills and intervales have been farmed, on an average, about a couple of hund rs. We thin they are worn out. The hills and valleys of Europe have been farmed for a couple of thousand years, and are pro- ducing today, acre for acre, more and better crops than the did a hundred or two hundred or two thousand years ago, and vastly better than we are getting. 1f our lands are real “worn out,” why on earth wasn't the surface of Europe “worn out” to desert waste a the vears back? Now, there’s no use dismissing the European farmer with a sneer as a peasant who can teach us nothing. That Euro- pean farmer is doing things with his dirt and making his dirt do things for him aiter two thousand y of persistent crop- ping it, which we bright Yanks think we can’t make our two- hundred-years-old dirt do for u Don’t you believe it? Listen, please During the ten-year period, 1900-1809 both years included, the average yield of potatos, per acre, was 123 bushels in France, 154 in Hungary, 201 in both Germany and Great Brit- ain, and—93 in the United States! And thé potato is a Na- tive American, too, belonging to this hemisphere, originating here, never known in Europe t ied there from here. Think of it: the scorned “peasant” farmers of ‘Germany and Great Britain are now, on their old. two-thousand-years-work- ed soil, producing regularly double the crop of this American tuber which the American farmers produce, right here in the place of its nativity, and on comparatively new lands! THERE IS NO ROOM FOR INVENTED PRETEXTS. Don’t begin inventing pretexts; don’t pretend that there is something mysterious the matter with our climate or our soil; don't try to hunt up excuses. There are no excuses. Why, that Néw York farmer Martin whom I have just men- tioned has had an average yield of 282 bushels per acre on his twent e potato field for the same ten years when the average for Germany and England was 201 bushels, and that for the rest of us blooming braggarts 9. Yet the first year Mr. Martin tried to grow potatoes he couldn’t get a hundred bushels off any one of the same acr There are several po- tato farmers up in Maine whose average annual crop rises well above the 200 bushel mark. There are quite a bunch of them throughout the country, Now the good Iord isn’t “playing favorites” He isn't picking out the farmers of England and Germany and these few in the United States who get good crops as special recipi- ents of special kindnesSes. Hé sends His rain on the just and on the ujust; His sun slines on the wise and on the un- wise, He just as willing to fill our seil with capillary tubes and nutrifying agents as the soils of England er Ger- many or Mr, Martin’s farm, Why,. in. the first ten years of this_century the average acre_yield in Maine was 180 bushels: Yet there were farm- ers in that same Maine—I happen to know of at least one— who didn’t average a hundred bushels to the acre, duflng that e\-ir:)ii.-§| Connecticut’s average was 95 bushels! And in that New York state, where Martin was regularly diggin, but his 282 bughcl’s per acre, the other farmers average scarcely 88 bushels! The “difference isn't in what nature and the good Lord do for us, but in what we do—or don’t do—for ourselv WHERE WE FOELOW INSTEAD OF LEAD: Perhaps you think that potatoes are the exception and that the farmers over in Europe make a special drive at them and don’t do as well, comparatively speaking, with other crops:, Let's consider wheat in that connection. Many of us think of the ited States as THE wheat country of the universe. “Guess them Dutchmen and Dagos can’t give us no pints 'haout raisin’ wheat:” That’s our attitude. Yet the facts show that are pretty near the tail of the wheat procession, so far as production is eon- cerned: In the tenzyear period from 1900 to 1910 the average production of wheat. per acre, was twenty bushels in France, nineteen and a half in Austria, thirty in Germany: thirty-three ngland—and fourteen in these great, big, blowing United States! In 1909. the last year with full returns, even semi- civilized Roumania produced an average of twenty-three bushels of wheat to the acre, and little Belgium harvested at the rate of thirty-seven and tweo-thirds bushels to the acre. We beat Siberia and Turkey—a little. And I presume that we did better than Greenland. Anything to be proud of in our wheat record, eh? How about rye? That's called by many a “poor land crop.” and is supposed to do something on any old sidehill pasture. ‘Austria’s average for the ten years of which I have statistics was nineteen bushels; Ircland’s average was twenty-seven and a half bushels—and ours was fifteen and a half bushels! WANT TO KNOW ABOUT OATS? For that same period, the average acre yield of oats in Hun, was almost thirty-one bushels: in France, almest thirt : in England over forty-four; in Germany nearly and in the United States twenty-nine! Little Bel- s average annual yield is more than sixty-nine bushel Z_close on to seventy. Scotland’s average is over thirty-nine Ireland’s over ty-three ngland’s about forty-three: even little craggy Wales is over thirty-nine. And ours is twenty- nine I haven’t any statistics accurately setting forth the average yield of hay abroad, but the average of the whole United States for 1911 was one ton and one-tenth to the acre. Such facts as I have indicate that the average in England is more than double this. and in Belgium more than triple. We all remembér how Hay King Clark for more than twenty years averaged between five and six tons to the acre off his Hig- ganum fields. We don’t need to go abroad to know what can be done with hay right in Connecticut. THE SIX MAIN FOOD CROPS OF THE WORLD. Taking the six main food crops of the world—wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn and potatoes—which six crops occupy about eighty per cent. of all the farm lands of the world given up to cultivation—excluding, of course, hay and other lorage— the Washington department of agriculture has prepared a little table showing how the various agricultural couatries rank in order of productivity. Taking “100” as “par” here is the way we stand in order of efficiency in crop-producing ! 221 United States ceassas 108 202 Ttaly 190 Roumani 177 Spain .. Bulgaria .. India Australia .... Setvia o Argentina jeese.-. ottt Ve Belgium .... witzerland . Netherlands Great Britain .. Germany . Denmark New Zealand ... Egypt cimeees 96 94 Russia 72 Sweden Siberia e ek Norway .. Uruguay PR (1 France ... Algeria .. 65 Austria . Hungary, : R e You'll observe that the big, boisterous and much-bragging United States are behind, not only in Belgium and Germany and Great Britain, but behind New Zealand and Egypt and Norway and Chile. But we beat Mexico and Australia and Algeria. Whoopee! Aren’t we the stuff? Mexico Seriously, though, what do you think about the facts dis- closed by that comparison HOW CONNECTICUT COMPARES WITH OTHER STATES. Perhaps, as a matter of local curiosity, you may be in- terested in knowing how Connecticut compares with the rest of the United States in this matter of production per acre. Connecticut’s acre average for potatoes, 1900-1910, was 95 bushels, against 93 for the whole country. Our average for oats was almost 32 bushels, against 29 for the whole coun- try. Our average for rye was almost 18 bushels, as com- pared with 15 1-2 for the whole country. Our average for corn was about 37 bushels, against about 26 for the whole country. But then, such pitiful yields as ten and eleven bushels in Florida, ‘Georgia and South Carolina had to be considered in the general corn average and brought it down sadly. It should be added, in strict justice, that corn is about the only crop in which we fairly hold up our end. But, considering that corn is a distinctly American cereal, and that we of the United States produce more than three-quar- ters of all that is raised around the world, the production in other lands being almost negligible, it will be seen that it is not a proper subject for comparison. The two European countries which make any serious attempt to raise a little corn both beat us in acre production, Italy by about a bushel and Hungary by nearly five bushels. Look back at that table of comparative productivity. All the important countries of old Europe excel us in the amount they get from their soils, though they have been taking off crops for two milleniums and we for scarce two centuries. Practically the only exceptions are such countries as Italy and Spain and Portugal and Roumania and Bulgaria where, during most of those two thousand years, the peasants have been ground down under the heel of ecclesiastical or baronial or alien tyrants and have not dared to raise good crops, lest they be murdered because of their coveted gran- aries. In all the great kingdoms where order has been com- paratively strict and property comparatively secure, the farmers excel us in the crops they get, acre by acre. - Now, I won't undertake to say just how many things this suggests, But I do say that it not enly suggests, it proves two things: First, that the farmers of Europe, as a rule, tak- ing them “by and large,” are better and more expert farm- ers than we are; second, that farm lands, when skillfully farmed, are not “worn out” by twe thousand rs of steady cropping, bat become steadily more preductiy These two things are enough in all censcience to make such of us as want to be-good farmers rather than merely want to brag about our farming—enough to-make such of s sit up and scratch our heads. OUR PROBLEM IS: HOW TO MAKE THE FARM PAY? Two, general methods naturally suggest themselves. We can either decrease our outgo, or increase our income. I%,a certain field produces $100 worth of crops, but costs us $101 for plowing and manuring and seed and culitivationt and fencing and taxes and interest and labor, then farming that particular field in that particular way does not pay. But if we can reduce some of those cost items, so that we put but only $94 for all purposes and still get $100 worth of crop, we've made about six per cent.—the field has paid that rate: Or, i it costs us $108 to raise the crop, but by shrewder management and more skillful work we can increase the crop’s value to $106, we have again made it pay. Now, the average ropean farmer does both of these things. He not otily grows his crops at a less outlay, com- paratively speaking, but he grows bigger crops. Oh, yés; I know what you're thinking. “If he's able to make so much more money over there, why does he immi- grate to the United. States 1 didn’t say he made more money. T say he raises better crops at less outlay. If you had to pay his taxes, and, like him, stand the waste of four to six of your best years as a conscript in the army, you'd appreciate the fact that he’s simply got to raise better crops at less cost in order to live atall. He has to bear burdens vastly heavier than ours. = Furthermore, it isn’t the farmers of Europe who come over here as immigrants, as a rule. It's the day laborers, and the third and fourth sons who have no heritage, and the landless men, and the hangers-on around towns who make up the bulk of our immigrants. The average European farmer sticks by the land which his fathers have tilled for unnumbered generations, and doesn’t come chasing American rainbows. THE EUROPEAN FARMER EXCELS US TWO WAYS. s I have said, the sides, the reduction of cro; duction. ropean farmer excels us on both cost and the increase of crop pr I am not speaking of the exceptional man but of the average European farmer. To begin with, he isn’t as afraid as many of us are of “puttering.” He has learned that it is only by taking infinite care with the little thing: that he can secure the larger results. Therefore. he watche: out for the small wastes, the trifling lea the seemingly unimportant details. A recent tourist among Belgian farms writes that the waste of manure which is common on almost all American farms would seem horrible to the Belgian farm- er. His barns are so arranged that every drop of liquid as well as solid manure from his animals carefully saved. Almost every farmer in the Low Countries keops a few cows and makes butter, mainly for the English market. All the manure from these animals is saved, as if it were money— it really is, you know—and cemposted in such a way as never to be exposed one minute to weather-waste. It is applied as frequently as possible to the fields, so as to make sure they get all its normal fertilizing content. 1 for any reason, there has to be undue delay in this, it is forked over and treated with cheap abserbents. As a result, the ordindry Belgian farmer, with half-a-dozen milch cows, regularly saves and applies to his land about twice the bulk of manure¢ which is customary from a New England dairy of like size. Not only does he have twice the number of loads, but it is worth nearly double, load for load, because all its value has been preserved—has not been allowed to dry away or volatilize off, or leach out. Because he thus saves the natural fertilizer which his farm yields, he is enabled to do without the costly commercial fertilizer which we less thrifty Yankees have to buy by the thousands of tons. It's “too much trouble” for us to cement our stable floors and supply watertight carts for qrawing out the stuff. So we're eternally short of manure and have to give over to the fertilizer trust a good share of what might be saved for our own profit. The finicky carefulness which these Belgian farmers show in this one matter of manure does not cease with the saving of animal excrementa. When cultivating their crops, the weeds they cut off or pull up are not allowed to lie on the ground to dry out and blow away, but are basketed and added to the compost heap. Much of the waste which we burn up in fall and spring bonfires goes the same way, fallen leaves, ho slops, anything and everything that will rot and make manure or humus. Many of them go so far as to clean up the coun- try roads, every so often, for the sake of the droppings and road dust thus obtained. In truth, they give attention to this one matter of manure-saving which we would think over-much to devote to a whole year’s farmin Moreover, they resort to all the known methods of supply- ing humus by plowing under green growths, especially clov- er: ivate——till, till, till. They aburbanite coddles Then they cultivate, cultivate, c coddle their fields fondly as a fresh s his eight-by-ten back yard garden. And they average sixty-nine bushels of oats to the acre, while we average twenty-nine! Also, two hundred bushels of potatoes, where we average ninety-three! I seem to hear some of you saying softly that they couldn’t do it, if they had to pay such wages as we must. In other words, you think they haven't any labor problem. Well, it is quite true that farm laborers are more plentiful in some parts of Europe than in some parts of this county. It is also true that wages run much lower. But, while their labor is plentier and cheaper by the day it is less efficient and dearer by the job. President Gross of the National Fertility league, whose sources of information are better than mine or yours, said in a recent address that the American farm workman averages just about double the ac- complishment of the European farm workman. That is, he obtains twice the results in the same time. But—he takes five acres to spread himself over, where the foreign laborer restricts himseli to two or three. “If the American farmer,” said Mr. Goss, “will cuiltivate one-half his present area and cultivate it well, it will increase his production and net him dollars where he now gets dimes.” Our farm labor problem lies in the scarcity of laborers; the European farm labor problem lies in their inefficiency. Which is the worse handicap, we won't discuss here. I mention it solely to indicate that we are not the only farmers who have troubles. INTELLIGENT TILLAGE ACCOUNTS FOR BIGGER CROPS. The average Furopean farmer goes far be outlay by careful conservation of the farm’s wastes; by the reduction of tax and interest bills through the restriction of his work to fewer acres; by his refusal to bond his income to any fertilizer trust; by his forethought in so arranging his crops as to make his farm practically support his family the year ‘round. He is a producer and a seller rather than a buy er. The “high cost of living,” meaning thereby the high price of goods sold, doesn’t worry him because he is seller, not buy- er, All these things we American farmers might learn from him to our vast profit, Then the average Eurepean farmer produces bigger crops than we do, acre for acre, by more intelligent and skillful tillage, 1 bave hesitated long before writing that werd “in- telligent” above, It is hard to admit that a lot of wooden- ond us in saving American Farning and Farming Elsewhere—America Should Lead, Not Follow shoed Frenclimen or hob-nailed Dutchmen are more intedli- gent than the average American, who has been brought.up from the cradle to think that he is about the “smartest” -and “slickest” of two-legged life on this earth. But, when one set of farmers, working on land that has been caltivatedsand tropped since Julius Caeser’s day, get double the. crops year after year that another set can get off comparaitively new soils, what-other. explanation can be given but that they plan and work more intelligently? They may not know so much about ancient history or the geography of South America or political economy; but they know more about farming their farms: 5 They save -money by fertilizing what we waste; they get more money, acre for acre, by making their land yicld bigger crops. WHAT AMERICAN FARMERS ARE DOING. It would be simply silly {0 say that we in this country can’t do what has been done and is being dgne all over Europe in the line of intelligent and skiliful jarming. We have the land; we have the brains; there is no reason why we can't hitch the two together and accomplish as much as any Bel- gian or German. Furthermore, to add practical proof there are farmers in this country, farmers scattered all over the va- rious states, farmers in New England and farmers in New York, and farmers in Towa and lllinois and California and Texas who are doing every whit as well as any European farmer and better than the European average along these very lines. No foreign hay record equals that made by+Clark on his sixteen Hagganum a There are more than.a hun- dred ptotato growers between Maine and Idaho who regu- larly obtain bigger yields per acre than the German average of two hundred bushels. I personally know of one twenty, acre wheat field in New York which beats any European av- rage, every time it is sown. No such acre ylelds of corn were ever heard of a water as have been sev- eral times garnered right here in Connecticut during the last few years. No, brethren, the reason why we average poorer crc this country is because our farming averages poorer: Those who work as intelligently and skillfully and forchandedly a6 they do abroad get as good if not better crops. I repeat it; the fault is not in our soils, but in ourselves. With our comparatively cheap land, which minimizes in- terest charges, and our freedom from the necessity of sup- porting huge idle armies which annually eat the heart out of camp-encumbered Europe, we here ought to be able to aver- ge just as good crops as the Old World—and save for our own profit a much bigger share of the resultant income. A SHARPLY CONTRASTED CASE. il Seme twenty years ago a farmer neighbor of mine got the t England. cross the char to v He didn't spend his time there gawping at cathedrals or studying tombs in Westminster Ab- bey: He went out among the farms of Kent and Sussex and Yorkshire and devoted his time to learning how they raised hay 'in the “tight little island.” When he came back he took one six-acre field, which had always been regarded as just average land, and proceeded to put in practice the ideas he had learned. He found he had to modify some of them to suit our climatic conditions: It teok him about three years te get that acre lot where he wanted it. For the next six years he took an average of thirty-four tons of first quality hay off it each season. Then he died, and the field, with the rest of the farm, passed into the hands of another farmer, That was eleven years ago. The field has been managed dur- ing those eleven years in the usual hit-or-miss, catch-as-catch~ can style. And it has produced, during those eleven years, an average of just about twelve tons per cutting. You observe—same field, same opportunities, same external conditions. but a different farmer and a different sort of farming. The firsct neighbor mentioned found that his profits from the field when he was cutting thirty-four tons off it were considerably over double what they had been when he was getting only twelve or fifteen, all expenses being taken out in both cases. T he lived, he planned to extend the system to his other fields and te other crops, simply as a matter of cold business, to make more money thereby. BETTER FARMING MEANS MORE THAN BETTER CROPS. Another thing: better farming means not better crops, acre for acre, but it means betterment of the farm and in- crease of its value. The farm which produces big crops is worth more in the market than the farm which yields only scant harvests. It is worth more, if you have to sell it; it is worth more if you have to live on it. Good farming con- serves all there is in the suruface soil and avails itself of all the help it can seduce from the subsqy beneath and the air above. It not only maintains original fertility, it adds there- to, so that the longer the land is cropped the better crops it grows. B A score of years ago Gilbertstown of lowa paid ,000 for na forty-acre farm. He is a specialist in onions and he turned the whole forty acres into an onion bed. He has averaged a profit of over $15,000 a year from it, ever since, and has re- fused an offer of 48,000 for it. That is, he has made it pay him annually seventy-five ce terest on his invest- ment, and at the same time increased its actual market value by a hundred and twenty per cent. 5 1 Now there’s durn little $500 an acre farm-land in Con- necticut. Very possibly, there may not be much that would do for onions, outside of the central river valley. But T’ll bet my boots that this same Gilbertson, if he had lived in Lebanon or Ledyard, would have found some other crop through which he could have made seventy-five per cent. profit on $50 an acre land, and would have doubled the value of that $50 an acre land while doing it. It isn’t the mud on the farmer’s boots that counts, but the man inside the boots. It isn’t the hayseed on his hair, but the gray matter inside his head. ALL DEPENDS UPON THE INDIVIDUAL FARMER. Take the subject from any side on which one may approach it, there is everything to be said in favor of a movement for better farming, rather than larger farming. The argument of profit is on that side: the argument of velling farm values is on that side: the argument of self approval is on that side. 1f these are not enough, the argument of neces- sity is on that side. We've simply GOT to do better farm- ing or go into the scrap-heap of incapables. K5 The demand of the consuming millions is steadily increas- ing. The supply must increase with it. We've about reached the limit of our area. There isn't much land left which we can “take up” and rob for a few years. We've got to meet the increasing demand by an increasing production from the land already under tillage—or stoop to the disgraceful ex- pedient of calling on the better farmers of Europe to feed the United States b I've sometimes thought that it would pay the farmers of almost any New England town to stand the cost of sending one of their number over to Europe, just to learn for himself and his neighbors how they manage, over there, to raise better crops than we on no better land. Perhaps the bill now pending in congress, providing for an expert farm ad- viser in every county, may serve something like that pur- pose. It surely will help some—if the appointment of the experts can possibly be kept out of politics! }'-ul all the teaching and all the preaching and all the advice in the world won't accomplish what, in the end, must be done by the individual f v initiative. THE FARMER. rmer on his ¢