Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-11-20
Diversity Of Crops and Home Markets.

Diversity Of Crops and Home Markets.
In the above caption are two things greatly
needed in California to render her farmers
and the State truly prosperous. The great
agricultural staple of this State is wheat, and
has always been, since we had any agricul-
tural staple. This is not altogether because
we have good and constant foreign demand
for wheat. 1t is more because we have not
good and constant home markets for other
agricultural products. We raise wheat then
because we know we can always sell wheat
not to our own people but to the English, the
Scotch, the Irish, the French, and now and
then to other people on the Eastern CONT
nent. Every farmer, and every other think-
ing man, knows that raising so much wheat
and so little of other crops viii one day,
if continued long enough, bring great in
jury to all our lands and tend
generally to check and retard our
general prosperity. But there is no use in
reading long lectures TO the farmers because
they raise so much wheat and so little of other
crops SO long as they can find constant re-
munerative market for wheat and cannot
find equally as constant and remunerative
market for other products. FIVE could sell
beef either at home or abroad at prices that
would pay US as well to raise beef on our best
wheat lands as it pays us to raise wheat, is 1t
not reasonable that many of us farmers
would raise less wheat and more beef? We
would certainly make the change just as soon
as we could, for the very good reason that we
know that raising wheat so constantly is i'm
poverishing our lands, while by raising
some beef and some wheat we can
So with mutton and wool and corn and pork
and every other crop. We raise wheat be-
cause we can always sell it, and We do not
raise diversity of agricultural products be-
cause we are not always sure of a market for
this variety of crops. This is fact that
cannot be disputed, for all farmers have more
or less proven its truth by more or less
dearly bought experience. We often hear
good business men berating the judgment
and good business sense of farmers, because,
as they say, the farmers take all the chances
on one single crop, and if that fails all fails,
and the farmer cannot pay his bills. Is it
not an indication of good judgment in the
farmer to raise what he knows will sell at a
paying price rather than to raise what
he knows will not sell at such price?
Why has the business of raising vegetables
ard garden truck generally in this State been
abandoned to Chinese and other foreigners ?
We all know that it is because there is not
money enough in the business to pay our own
people-to enable them to raise and school
their families in the style that Americans
want to do. The truth is that very few
things the farmer can produce from the soil
in this State, that there is not foreign de-
nand for, will pay a satisfactory profit. In
other words, there are but few things upon
which the farmer has to depend exclusively
for home market that a good business can
be made in producing; and right here is to
be found the reason why 80 many
farmers depend so constantly and en-
tirely on one crop - wheat. Ii
n merchant finds that he can always, or
nearly always, make a good profit in buying |
and selling a single line of goods, and that if |
he invests his money in other kinds of goods |
he is most sure to be obliged to keep them on
his hands, or to sell them at loss, would it |
not be mark of good business judgment in
that merchant to deal in the article that in
sures him good profits? The thing needed in
this State above all others to render diver
sifed agriculture possible and profitable is
home market for the products of such an ag-
And what is needed to make or |
create this home market? Do we need |
more merchants? We have already too |
many of this class of men for their |
own good. Do we need more lawyers and |
doctors We all think we have too many of
them for our own good There is one class of
people we do need, and the State needs, to
bring home ma rkets for all the farmer can
produce and prosperity to all classes of bust
ness and employment to labor of all kinds.
This class needed is the manufacturing class.
The men and women employed by manufac-
turing establishments consume the food pro-
ducts of the farmer-not the wheat
alone, but the potatoes, the vegeta
bles, the milk and butter and cheese,
and eggs and chickens, the beef and mutton
and pork-while the machines that these men
and women run and attend and direct con-
sumo the textile products of the farmer, such
as the fax, the cotton, the wool, the silk, the
mohair, and both together consume all the
products of diversified agriculture. II,
therefore, California would have diversity
of crops she must have home markets for
these crops, and it is impossible to have home
markets without first having manufactures to
employ the people and the machinery to
consume the crops. So long as we make
wheat the great and almost exclusive agri-
cultural staple, so long we shall ship that
wheat to foreign country for its principal
market, and so long as we do this so long we
shall continue to rob the soil of its fertility
and posterity of its rightful legacy.