The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1891-03-04
Agricultural Education.

The prediction has often been made
that as soon as farming is reduced to a
science, and in that way becomes both
pleasant and profitable TO q far higher
degree than at present, it will be the
most desirable and popular employ
ment of the best educated people. 1t
seems hardly questionable that such
will be the case. The soil is a labora-
tory in which the chemists of the fu-
ture will delight to work as soon as it
dawns upon them that they can, by
their alchemy, compound the gold with
which to supply their daily needs and
comforts. 1t is the object of agricul-
tural education to effect this happy re-
suit, sooner or later. A writer in
LipDincottS Magazine thus puts the
case:
Z" The primary object of all agricultural
training is to make better farmers: that &C
complished, and all else follows in due
course-increase in productiveness, check
ing of wastes, conserving of soil fertility,
etc. The better the farmer, the greater the
profit from the farm. 1t may seem mar
row view to take, but not until it has been
demonstrated that there is money in it ;
will the occupation of farming become more
popular and better class of men be at
tracted to it-men who are better educated
better equipped in every way for that or
any other occupation. These men should
come from the farm to the farm. They
should be the generation now approaching
manhood, and should come from the farm
to the college and thence again to the farm,
carrying with them to put in practice there
the teachings of the school, to the end that
they may become better farmers than their
fathers. Farm-life will be denuded of
many OF its sordid and narrowing condi-
lions as soon as the struggle for bread and
for the occasional surplus dollar becomes
less grinding; and whenever the educated
man is able to pursue the occupation with
the probability of a pecuniary reward APP
proximating that which the same exercise
of his talents would bring in other walks of
life, and to surround himself and his family
with the same privileges that they would
have were he otherwise engaged, then the
end toward which all present effort for
higher agricultural education is being di-
rected will he achieved, and the farming
classes become awake to the value of a
trained mind"
The writer tells his readers how he
would accomplish this object through
agricultural education. Let the farmer
be taught how to get all he can out of
his soil. Let him understand that
when an ear of corn has grown to
double its size it has been because the
soil that fed it contained in dudilable
form jus the quantity and quality of
foods needed for the complete develop
ment of the compliant. Let him I'M
derstand that, by knowing the needs of
any crop and also knowing what ele-
ments his land contains and in what
proportion, he can give the crop by ar
tiicial combinations Just what will pro-
duce the best results. THE funda-
mental practical principles which it is
the aim to teach are, bri, fly, the ele-
ments of plant-food, the sources from
which they are derived, how assimi-
lated by the plant, the physiological
changes that take place at different
stages of the plants growth, methods
of tillage by which the plant-food can
best be made available, how the fer
tiity of the soil can best be conserved,
how lacking elements can be most cas-
lily supplied, and-the one item OF
paramount mportance-how to make
| the most of such resources as already
exist in the soil" These are questions
with which the farmer who has had
no scientific education is utterly unable
to cope, but they are questions which
must be answered before success can
be assured.
The line of thought followed in this
extremely sensible article suggests the
ever-recurring question, eff scientific
agricultural education is of such in
creasing importance, why is not Yer
mont, an almost purely agricultural
state, doing more for it?" And if the
farmers of the state seek an answer
let them put the question to themselves
for whether the state is to ever have
an independent and efficient agricul-
tural college is point which they alone
can settle.