Askov American. [volume] (Askov, Pine County, Minn.) 1914-current, 1925-12-24
Speaker Says that Northwest
Farmers are on Right Road

ed long enough TO nave seen the AM
erican farmer rise from some tighter
situation than the present one.
Yet all this gloom is doing us a
lot of harm down east In Washing
ton and New York recently, every
body was asking us from Minnesota,
rs it true that the northwest is
broke. Are all of your farmers go
ing hay-wire?"
We had the pleasure of telling
them something about Minnesota.
For example, our wheat crop, in 1928
was about 20,000,000 bushels, and it
brought about a dollar bushel, or
SIC, 100000. That's all we got for
wheat
Suppose the price had been fixed
at So a bushel. Then Minnesota's
wheat would have been worth about
$40,000,00O. That seems like a lot
of money until we compare it with
some of the other things our Mime
sofa farmers produce.
Poultry Exceeds Wheat.
For example, that does not equal
our poultry crop, $5O,000,OO0; and
that's ''some chicken. Yet it is only
one by-product of our dairy farms.
Then our butterfat crop, the same
year, brought us $85,000,000 golden
dollars, or more than twice what 50
wheat would have brought. That's
the total of all the cream checks is
sued to farmers by our creameries.
Out of this we made nearly $685.
100000 worth of fine, rich, golden
creamery butter, for which Minneso-
ia is justly famous. This is the larg-
est butter production in all North
America; more than any other state
or the whole Dominion of Canada.
This $95,000,000 we got in cash
golden dollars for golden butter
brand new money from the eastern
markets. Our cooperative creameries
returned more than 80 per cent of
every dollar they took in to the cream
producer
That's the highest return made to
producers for any farm product
grown in America. They paid our
farmers an average of nearly 4S cents
pound for butterfat.
1t has been shown in Steele county,
where the University has conducted
cost surveys, that butterfat is being
produced, under ordinary farm condi-
lions as low as % cents a pound. No
body is going to go broke doing that.
Dairying Is States Leading Industry.
That's not all. The total dairy food
products in Minnesota, including
this butter and all the cheese, cream,
milk, buttermilk and veal calves, is
$1S8, 100000 in cash. ~
If we add the fertilizer $42, 900
600 more, we have a grand total of
$3.50, 100000 from giving our 1,60O,-
600 bossy cows the Magnus Johnson
handshake night and morning.
Then we raised $26,OO0,O00 worth
of pigs-fattened, on skim milk, a
waste by-product of dairying. So the
COW, and SOW and little red hen
brought us grand total of 1920, 000,-
900; or more than Is times our wheat
crop of only $20,O0Q0OO.
That's saying nothing about our
beef cattle, fattened on our own corn;
our surplus breeding stock, or our
wool and mutton chops.
The point l am making is that, so
far as Minnesota is concerned, wheat
has ceased to be the index of our
prosperity. This must be measured
now in terms of diversified farming
and dairy products.
Butter Would Half Encircle Earth.
Last year our creameries made
100000 pounds of this golden
butter. That's 21S,O00,O00 of these
little four inch one-pound prints,
that we pay good price for in the
cities. If we laid these on an end,
they would reach a distance of $4,000
miles, or half way around the equa-
tor, about $4,000 miles.