St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-08-06
WEAR OF WHEAT LAND.
Fargo Argus Takes Issue With
Mr.. Stickney.

Fargo Argus.
A. B. Stickney, of the Great West:
ern railway, occupies space in the
Chicago Tribune to say:
The great spring wheat producing
sections in Northern Minnesota and
famed Red river valley, will not raise
this year over ten bushels of wheat
to the acre. This, he says, is about
half a crop. Not that the conditions
nor that anything has happened to
curtail the yield. The trouble is, he
said, the land IN those sections has
been exhausted by raising the same
kind of crop each year.
This will be news to the wheat rails
ers of North Dakota who have this
year, on lands continuously planted to
wheat for FIFTEEN years, raised twenty
bushels or more to the acre.
So far as the fertility of the soil Is
concerned, there is no farmer in the
Red river valley who has lived here
long enough to be able to say that
there is any limit to it. Lands are
summer fallowed, or rested, because
they become foul with weed seeds, but
not because they fail to produce.
Year after year the careful farmer
who looks after his farming and after
| his seed, sows wheat upon his wheat
lands and harvests a crop therefrom.
The lands show not the slightest sign
of wearing out. There is a twenty
five bushel to the acre crop of wheat
growing at this moment upon q piece
of land near Fargo that has been
cropped at least for fourteen years.
Mr.. Stickney continues:
Experience had proven that land, no
matter how rich in the beginning, gets
exhausted after being planted with the
same kind of crops for ten or hfteer,
years consecutively. This is what had
been done in the Red river valley and
the DakotaS, and no matter how eX~
cellent the weather conditions might
be the crops will grow smaller from
year to year if wheat only is raised.
Different kinds of crops must be
raised from time to time II the land
is to be kept productive, and unless
diversified farming is resorted to in
the Northwest the farmers will become
impoverished before long and the
Northwest will cease to be the great
wheat-producing section OF the coun-
try.
And shows that he does not know
what he is talking about. Some land
will wear out in ten years, some in
fifteen years-perhaps there is land
that will wear out in two years; but
the land of the Red river valley is
without limit as to its powers of rails
ing crops-so far as any experience
goes.
When Mr.. Stickney talks about the
soil of the "Dakotas" as if it was of
one quality, or of one power of dura-
ton, he simply shows that he does
not consider carefully what he is say
ing. There is every sort of soil III the
two states. Some Of it is not fit to
raise wheat upon at all; and nobody
has ever thought of putting it to that
purpose. The wheat lands, on the
contrary, are the richest of earth and
as productive today as they ever were.
The mistake of farming wheat lands
too long has never been made in this
state, The trouble has been that
lands that should have never been
broken-that should have been left to
grow to grass for cattle and sheep,
have been taken as farms; that too
much careless farming has been done;
that men who did not know that pump
kins did not grow on trees, have tried
to succeed as farmers, and that, while
prices were high, notwithstanding
their ignorance and extravaganza,
they were able to make money so rap
idly that they lost their heads, and
when close times came-their grip.