The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-08-04
SHOULD GROW ALFALFA
A Few Pointers to San Joaquin
Farmers on Its Guilt
walton.
MORE PROFIT THAN WHEAT.
Large Meat-Packing Concerns In
terested in Alfalfa as Food
for Stock.

! The Southern States have crowned cot
ton as liking" for many years, and corn in
the West is king, then why should not
alfalfa be crowned king OF the San Joa-
quin Valley?
California, that part of it embraced in
the big San Joaquin Valley is, in the strug-
gle of wheat raising, competing against
padrone labor of Argentine ryot labor of
India and ex-serf labor of Russia. Our
State is generally recognized as an Ameri-
can State more observably so than many
of the older ones and, of course, 1t is Amer
leans in California who are now competing
against the pauper labor mentioned en-
gagged in wheat raising. 1t is inevitable
that in the end we will surely go to the
wall unless our wheat-raiser will live as
his competitors do, which it is to be hoped
may never be. Grasses are the most i'm
portant of all the agricultural products.
Statistics show that there is no one crop
grown out of the earth that equals Ii value
the grass crop, and one who cares to in
vestigate the wonderful productiveness
of alfalfa in the San Joaquin
Valley must be struck with the conditions
that prevail with the idiotic effort to raise
wheat at present prices, and will naturally
grow alfalfa and raise cattle? All that
country lying between the Mariposa River
and the Rocky Mountains is becoming
less and less productive, and tame grasses
are not being started with much success.
All that country is overstocked with cat
tie on the big ranges now. The physical
and natural conditions that prevail in that
part of our country are not conducive to
the growing of tame grasses. A scarcity
OF rainfall and an almost impossibility of
irrigation will surely throw the business
of cattle-raising into such favorable loca-
tions as this big San Joaquin Valley pre-
sents, with its four and i've crops of alfalfa
every year. 1t is not intended to convey
the idea that beef cattle raising on al
falfa is bonanza, but it certainly is
more profitable enterprise for the
farmer to engage in than the one
OF wheat-raising at the present prices with
but little possibility of its being much
higher for many years TO come. Take the
extensive areas of land in Kern and Tulare
counties, now lying under water system,
that can be used the entire year for irriga-
ton, and, if partly planted in alfalfa, there
is no doubt but what the stock raiser, on
such land as that, will become well-to-dO
in a very few years. Three of the neigh
bors ad joining the writer fruit ranch near
ViSolia are conducting their farms on the
alfalfa idea and they are the only farmers
near by whose lands are not blanketed
with mortgage. mere are many OJnef
alfalfa ranches in Tulare County, also in
Kern, and in every instance their owners
are free from membranes, and generally
they have money to loan. Wheat farming
can hardly put up such showing as that,
anywhere in our State. In particularly
mentioning cattle-raising in connection
with alfalfa, it is not intended to advise
the giving up of hog-raising; if there is
any one feed that pigs can be brought up
on better than alfalfa the discovery has
not yet been made. 1t is equally as good
for chickens, turkeys, ducks or geese-rais-
ing. All of our domestic animals are fond
of it and they will get fat and keep so on
it alone. Is there any earthly reason why
packing houses for curing meat on this
coast couldn't be kept supplied from the
product of our soils and thus turn the
trainloads of Westinghouse products of
Chicago in another direction? Let Kansas
City and the windy city supply the
East, but let California supply the West.
Her fruits are now going to London with
success, and there is no reason why her
pork, bacon and beef should not supply
our Pacific Coast. MAJOR C. ]. BERRY.