Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1903-11-13
IowA,s BIG ONION. CROPS.
scott County zrners Are Making
Good Incomes Raising
PunEent Vegetable.

: One of the greatest onion growing dis
tricts in the United States. often quoted
as the greatest, is that which lies along
the Iowa shore of the Mississippi river
above here and has Davenport as its
| market and shipping point The onion
! is known as the Scott county orange,
and is one of the main agricultural sta
| pies of this region. Just now it Is being
| sent in carload after carload to St Louis,
| the principal point of distribution over
| the south. There are some shipments
| to other southern points, even as Tar as
New Orleans, but st. Louis is the great
! jobbing point to which the commission
! houses here consign. Chicago gets a fair
slice of the crop, Cincinnati takes some
and there are scattering shipments TO
| other points, but ST. Louis has long been
the principal consignee.
| The harvest has been on here several
| weeks, says a recent Davenport report
| The crop is fine and though the average
| Is not as great this year as 1t has been
| in some past years, there appears now
to be a total product here of $50 to 200
carloads, running about 600 bushels to
! the car. The quality is excellent this
year and the market has held firmly
around the price Of so cents per busheI
Usually the price says by this time, but
this year it has held up well. The fail
ure of the crop, in. part or in whole. in
| other onion growing regions is under
stood to be the reason of this stiffness.
| There is tract in Ohio that grows
| good onions, and there is another in
Nebraska, about 40 miles west of Omaha.
but the Scott county, Iowa, onion field
has for so years been the big one, and
| hot oil cd
There have been very few failures here
The quality has fiuctuated with the sea-
son. sunburn and rot appearing at times
to do mischief, but usually the red onion
OF Scott county has been well at the top
| of the market. 1t has made more than
| one man rich in this part Of the coun-
try, and it is paying big dividends this
year.
There is no crop that northern farm
er can raise that means so much money
to him as the onion. Unfortunately, the
opportunities in that direction are few,
for there is not much prime onion land
in the country. When the Scott coun-
ty tract was new, in the earliest '40's, it
/ was no difficult thing to get 600 bushels
from an acre of it. Nearly that yield has
| been gathered in recent years where the
fertilizers and cultivation. Five hundred
and 600 bushels to the acre are more
usual, but still higher yields are often
got. There is a good deal of work in
making the crop, cultivation being q
| large item, so it is reckoned that it takes
$40 to $50 an acre to grow onions. In
times OF low prices the margin is reduced
but it is still large, except when a glut
of onions lets the bottom quite out OF
the market. Once or twice within the
last 25 years onions here have been down
| to ten cents and even eight cents bush
Ell, with practically no sales at those
prices, but the average has been far
| above those figures, and at a price that
meant large returns.
There is more money in onions than
in corn 90 times over, provided that the
land is adapted to onion growing. A
yield of 500 bushels to the acre at this
years prices has meant a profit Of 5000
| or more per acre; and in those cases
where the farmer and his family did the
work, hiring nothing, they have alb
sorbed the cost of cultivation and made
Just that much more. The best Scott
county onion land is held at hundreds
| of dollars per acre and is rarely sold. 1t
| Is usually farmed in fields of small or
moderate size, but there are many small
patches, tracts of an acre or two, or a
| fraction of an acre, that are made to
yield astonishingly.
The crop is always shipped in gunny
| sacks, holding about two bushels, never
In bulk. During the onion harvest here
there are usually weeks when the streets
are blocked by the wagons of the onion
growers, waiting their chance to get to
the warehouse, unloading or getting
away. The steamers usually carry
good part Of the shipments to St Louis.
though there is very large balance that
| goes there by rail. In the colder wealth
er all the shipments, of course, are made
| by rail.
There are always some growers who
hold their crop of onions until well il to
| the winter or even the spring While
there is a possibility of loss by freezing,
and certainly some loss by rotting and
| always some shrinkage, there are now
and then onion markets in the spring
time that are simply golden in theii
chances of easy wealth for the man who
| has onions to sell. 1t was a recent af
fair here that group of Scott county
onion raisers held back their crop unit
the severe weather was past The faI
market had been about 30 cents bush
Ell. In the spring they got their onion,
on with no heavy shrinkage on thei'
| hands at a price around s1.25 Their.
have been other years when the stool
of late onions went still higher 1t /.
believed that, notwithstanding the very
good market this fall, a number of grow
ers here will try to carry at least par
of their stock through to the next season
4 ffv,cr hot -f<-of ~ &c Rn1T