The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-07-24

| soil, generally speaking, is in a bad condl- | tion. 1 have been holding farmers tnsti- l tute meetings in Iowa for some weeks, l and l can safely say that never saw so | poor a prospect for a good corn crop as 1 we now see in that state. Much depends 1 upon our fall to the result of the crop l in the northern states. Our fall months 1 will have to be summer ones, if we get d | good crop of corn this season. The con l ditions are no better in Illinois, Missouri, | Kansas and Nebraska than they are Tn l Iowa.
 Wheat
 | Like the corn crop, the wheat crop is l spotted and we find only a few good crops | in the favored sections. Wheat thresh- l ing is now going on in Missouri and Kan sas, and shows light crop generally. The | quality of the grain as rule is good. | Nebraska probably has the best wheat | crop of any of the western states.
 The green bug and the cold dry weather | of May so damaged the wheat as to great 1 ly reduce the yield in nearly all sec- l tons of our country. The probabilities i are that we will have only half crop of
 wheat. that is, that we will probably make
 only twelve bushels per acre when we 1 should have twenty-five.
 Oats.
 The oat crop is very short and in many
 sections is hardly worth harvesting. This l is true of the crop in southern Iowa and l Missouri The green bug has also been
 working on the oat crop in Iowa and has 1 done considerable damage.
 Cotton.
 I The cotton crop, like the corn crop,
 is late, very late generally, the plants
 small and the soil Is in a bad condition. In
 fact. the prospect for a crop at this date
 Is about as poor as l have ever seen. Many crops had to be replanted. and this made the crop late and besides this only a poor stand was secured over a great part of the cotton growing sections Like the corn crop, all now depends upon long summer and late frosts. We will need fine reasonable weather in all sec-
 tions throug September for making both the corn and cotton crops.
 The Hay Crop. The hay crop is up to and above the a@- l craze and for some weeks farmers havo l been improving the fine weather in har- 1 vesting a fine crop of hay and the hay
 harvest is still on with perhaps To per cent | of the crop harvested
 The alfalfa hay was damaged some oy | frosts in the west during the cold weath- 1 CT of May but this damage has been 1 overcome by the increased acreage soWn 1 in the west to alfalfa, so that is the pres
 ent crop of hay can all be saved, we Ulll have an abundance of hay. Fruit.
 The fruit crop is generally short and
 of poor quality This Is especially true of the apple and peach crops There was a fairly good crop of ber
 res in many sections. These are about
 all gone so that we may expect a short age ol fruits on our markets for the remainder of the season.
 Potatoes and Other Vegetables.
 The potato crop is also short in many
 sections. The prices keep up on all veg | etables and the supply is short in all ! our markets. A St. Louis paper of recent date stated that the prices of vegetables
 were so high in St. Louis that the la boring class of people can not afford to buy them. This condition suggests tho
 importance of planting fall gardens.
 Noxious Weeds. The whole country Is grown up in
 weeds. Wild parsnips, wild carrots, wild mustard, sour dock and numbers of others growing along the highways and in the meadows everywhere l go. I
 never saw such a crop of weds as we have this season and they seem not to
 be choice of sections but grow anywhere. The worst feature of this Is that these
 weeds are being allowed to mature seed
 and there will be a great abundance of sec for next years crop.
 In Iowa nearly every town is all grown up in these bad weeds. There are more bad weds growing in that state than in any other in which l have been. A
 numoer of bad grasses, too, have made their appearance in the fields and mead ows.
 Summary.
 So looking over the whole agricultural situation, l am led to conclude that this Is our off year on nearly all crops Besides this the profits in producing our crops will be small this season for the cort Of production is unusually high This is an expensive season for farming and 1t costs all there is in crop to produce it and put 1t on the market. This con- dition. of course, Is largely due to the unfavorable weather or extremes of