Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1922-12-18

There is a type OF stat,stician who starts out
with certain ideas and who uses everything that
comes within his reach for the purpose of proving
the correctness of those ideas. In considering the
condition of the wage Garner, for instance, he starts
out with the conviction that afamily cannot be sup
ported decently on less than 81, 500 a year. He may
have been receiving that sum himself, and, of
course, he finds it not enough. 1t has not provided
him with all the things he would like to have, and
he may have been running behind every month.
1t he can't make ends meet on a given income, how
can anybody else? Therefore he figures out So, 500
worth of things that it is pleasant for a family to
have, and says There you are! Anybody can
achieve that result in a few minutes, in spite of the
fact that millions of people are living and prosper
ing on much less money. i
When this statistician tackles the farm prob
lens he does SO for the purpose of showing that the
farmer spends more than he makes, and is going
Idown hill every day. One thing that he is pretty
sure to do is to make a good round charge for fer
ltilizer.
If a man dopes his soil with commercial phos-
&phates, and nitrates, and %carbides, and all the rest
of the chemical list, he can spend a lot of money on
an acre. 1t is a fact that in some sections of the
country commercial fertilizers appear to be neces-
sary. At any rate they are very largely used. But
commercial fertilizers are not used to any appre-
iciable extent in the northwest. nor are they needed.
When J. G. Haney took charge. of the Interna-
|tonal Harvester demonstration work here ten years
1ago the company leased a farm which had been
cropped continuously for thirty years or. The
wheat yield there had averaged for years about 10
bushels per acre. In three years Mr.. Hanev had
that land yielding rs bushels of wheat per acre, an
average which has been maintained continuously
ever since. Yet he had bought no fertilizer and
made no lavish expenditure of money in any direc-
ton. He was managing the farm on the basis of
the man of small capital, and he had to make every
1 penny and every movement count.
( Mr.. Haney fortified his fields, if grain yields
demonstrate anything as to fertility, but he made
the fertilizer pay for itself and yield a little profit
while it was being produced. He put live stock on
the land and by means of an intelligently planned
rotation in which forage crops played an important
part, he reftted the land for grain and the stock
yielded a profit during the process.
Talk about the soil of the Red river valley be-
ing worked out is bunk. In many cases the surface
is c1uttered up with weeds, and continuous crop
ping with one crop has robbed the top soil of SONG
OF its elements of plant growth. But the thing that
! was done on the international farm can be done on
nny piece of naturally good land in the valley.
y There has been a good deal of talk about cur
failing wheat production. 1t isn't necessary, nor
Hwould it be wise. We need tohproduce as many
Ibushels of wheat on half as many acres, with the
Mother acres producing something else that can be
Aalsurned into money.