Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1889-06-20
FOR THE FARMER.
Necessity for the Application of Scientific
knowledge in the Business of
Agriculture.
Horticulture in the PupIic Schools-Ren-
ovating Old Orchards-Protect
the Blue Jay.
The Agriculture of the Future.

The Agriculture of the Future.
The average yield of wheat in the
United States is about twelve bushels
per acre. 1t is commonly sown with
q drill, which deposits the seed in rows
eight inches apart; eight rows are
commonly planted at each turn; an
average of one and half bushels of
seed is used per acre; one man with
team will plant eight acres per day,
and this being done in September, the
field has no further attention until the
reaper is put in the following July to
gather whatever harvest Providence
has seen fit to send as a reward for the
negligence of the husbandman.
Professor Blount, of the Colorado
Agricultural College, having first made
an elaborate study of the habits and
needs of the wheat plant, conducted a
series of experiments in its cultivation
with the following results:
First he planted upon an exact square
acre seven and one half pounds of
hand-picked wheat in rows of eighteen
inches apart, and at harvest threshed
out sixty-seYen bushels; again, upon
one-fourth of an acre he planted thirty
two ounces of selected seed, and the
product was eighteen bushels; and
again, upon seventy-six square feet he
planted seventv-six kernels of extra
fine seed. weighing forty-fve grains,
and the product was ten and one-half
pounds, or nearly at the rate of one
hundred bushels per acre.
These results are not more remarka-
BILE in the excessive Weld from a given
area than in regard to the yield from a
given portion of seed. Agricultural
discussion too often directs attention
to result without sufficiently analyz-
ing the means by which it is obtained.
A pertinent feature of these expert
ments is the saving of an amount of
seed which, averaged upon the entire
grain acreage, would add annually a
vast sum to the wealth OF the nation.
If we should throw into the sea an
nually fifty million bushels of wheat
and a proportionate amount of the
other cereals, the world would cry out
at our improvidence. Yet if Professor
Blount's conclusions are correct-and
they are supported by much collateral
evidence-we bury this amount in the
ground where it is not only thrown
away, but where it actually decreases
the resultant crop.
The economic results that would fol-
low if we should be able to increase
our production even approximately to
the above ratio are too far-reaching
for the scope of this article. Our
ability to feed an almost limitless in
crease of population would be assured.
1t may be that oyer-production would
recoil upon ourselves, bnt we have al
ready successfully encountered the
lowest wheat markets of the globe.
and as increased production would
mean decreased cost, we might event
ually be able to make good our boast
of ''feeding the world"
With a population increasing at the
rate of twenty-five per cent. with every
decade, it is hardly probable that our
production CATER the final occupation
of all the public lands) will at the best
more than keep pace with its needs.
AS before suggested, most progress
! i've development will be required if we
| even accomplish that.
Farmers generally will say that the
| results secured by the above expert
ments are not attainable upon any ex-
tended scale; probably not, to the av-
| erage farmer, because, having so much
land to till, he must still sow his eight
acres per day. 1t may occasionally
occur to one of particular intelligence
that it might be economy to produce
nis hundred bushels by the thorough
cultivation of two acres rather than by
specifically working upon eight.
| Such a one will find that exact and
scientific methods are practical as
well.
1t would consequently seem that the
| pursuit of agriculture can offer induce
! ments to the student who would in turn
| become the teacher, to the business
man who would exert his talents in il
as financial enterprise, to the scien-
| fist who would combine a profitable
avocation with the investigation of the
| laws of nature. and to the economist
who from his own observations would
add to the general knowledge of how
best to conserve the forces of produc-
| ton.