Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1908-09-29
Many Car Loads Of Seed Shipped
from Greene and Adjacent
Territory
PROFIT in THE BUSINESS
Amount Of Corn Being Cut in North
ern Iowa Below Average of Recent
Years-one Mans Plan to Make
Good on Dakota Land Investments
Wilson'S Rural Observations.
Special to Times-Republlcan.

Special to Times epuDllcan.
Greene, Sept. 29.-It is perhaps not
generally known that this is the CEN
ter of one of the principal millet seed
growing regions of this country. yet
such is fact 1t is estimated that
there will be this year at least fifty
car loads of Japanese millet seed
shipped from here this year to the
great seed dealers located in different
parts of the country, who have come
to regard this as a reliable source Of
supply.
The first experiment in this line was
made by a man named Doore about
seven years ago He secured yield of
seventy five bushels per acre from a
ten-acre field and sold the seed for
$3.50 Others seeing a good thing in
the business began growing seed for
the market and the miElet seed indus
try has rapidly grown to Its present
proportions This year two men in the
community have about seventy acres
each, which will thresh out forty bush
els per acre and at the prevailing mar
ket price will net the growers a graft
flying profit.
Erick johnson, proprietor of a, we'll
known stock farm in this locality is
one of the successful millet seed men
From twenty-acre field he threshed
more than 1000 bushels of seed, and
the product sold at 20 cents per bush
eli figures up gross returns of about
s445O an acre. Such yields however.
are not obtained by ordinary farming,
nor on any land except that of an un-
usual high state of fertility as the crop
requires rich soil free from weeds
and grass.
The amount Of corn that is being cut
for fodder this fall in northern Iowa
is ~very much below the average for
the last five or six years. Two reasons
are given by farmers for this. In the
first place the hay crop this year was
an abundant one and little other rough
age will be needed to winter the farm
live stock. Many men when asked why
they are not using their corn binders
reply that with the prospect of an I'M
usually high price for corn they are
unwilling to lessen the yield any by
crtting up fodder, for it requires ex-
pert work to secure a fodder crop
without shortening to a greater or less
extent the grain yield and they don't
wish to assume any unnecessary risks
In this direction at the present time. 1t
might be added too, that the average
farmer does not relish the idea of
working with corn fodder and is ever
ready to listen to arguments tending to
prove that 1t doesn't pay to cut up
corn
Here is the plan of one iowa man
by which he hopes and expects to win
out in a Dakota land deal. Observa-
tions covering several years of time
have convinced him that much land
in that region has been homesteaded
and broken up that owing to natural
causes can never be probably farmed.
He is persuaded that the days of the
big ranches there are gone, never to
return, but that the time will soon
come when, dishearteped by midsum-
mer drouths, many Who have home
steaded or bought quarter sections ex-
pecting to make a living off them by
farming and finding this out of the
question, will sell to those who, get
ting control Of several hundred acres