The Old and the New in Agriculture

Breeding better strains of potatoes — Utah Agricultural Experiment Station The Old and the New in Agriculture By George Stewart, M. S., In Charge of Field Crop Investigations, Utah Agricultural Experiment Station

The earliest methods of soil culture and plant production can not, of course, manifest themselves after thousands of years. Somewhere a knowledge of agriculture creeps slowly out of the mist of the forgotten and gradually becomes distinct. Farm relics found in Switzerland and northern Europe tell clearly that the Lake Dwellers, long before the time of Moses, grew wheat; but not even the barest record carries any information of their tillage methods, except that they were very crude. History does, however, speak clearly of the Nile's flooding its banks, irrigating wheat, barley, sorghum, vetch, melons, and fruits; of truck crops grown upon hanging gardens in Babylon; of a gigantic reservoir which furnished water for land and people in ancient Sabaea; of the dry-farming of Palestine, and of the fertilizing of the farms by the Hebrews under compulsion of law; of the great Roman aqueducts that carried water high in the air over lowlands to city and farm; and of Columella, Virgil, and Cato's having taught the descendants of Romulus agriculture that is considered good science today. Less directly, but none the less clearly, history carries the record of good and poor harvests in the western world. Prescott mentions a fair-skinned teacher of tillage among the Mexicans whom they expected to return; Longfellow rehearses Hiawatha's teaching the natives how to grow better Indian corn. A Bit of History In colonial days maize was the principal crop. Squanto showed Miles Standish and his people how to make it grow on

342 IMPROVEMENT ERA

the impoverished soil of New England by fertilizing each hill with fish. Powhatan gave Captain John Smith corn when that redoubtable leader seized the chief by the hair, and, pistol in hand, demanded food for the starving settlers of Jamestown, while hundreds of warriors looked on. Spaniards found corn the most important crop of Mexico and Peru. Potatoes no larger than eggs supplemented the diet of meat and maize. In Kentucky Daniel Boone ground into meal corn raised between the stumps. The native grasses made forage; the woods furnished fruits and nuts as well as flegh. None of these people attempted real plowing; tools of wood scratched the soil. When this no longer sufficed to keep fertile the constantly-cropped lands, old farms became once more a part of the wilderness. The Virginians, both before and after Independence, planted tobacco year after year in the same fields. Following the invention of the cotton gin, the Southerners did likewise with cotton. No one foresaw the vast stretches of abandoned farms that were to follow; hence no one thought of crop rotation, fallow, deepplowing, or clean cultivation. Little better are the farmers who now keep a field of alfalfa or of sugar-beets for twenty years. In agriculture a man must not put all his eggs in one basket.

What Happened in Utah Just as the cotton boll- weevil compelled rotation, deep plowing, clean cultivation, and timely planting in the cotton areas, so the alfalfa weevil, June-grass, and seasons of small precipitation compel them in Utah. Let us examine wheat-growing in a certain valley. A number of years ago several men took large tracts of land north of the county seat, and others below the old lake benches. Once broken the farms yielded abund- — antly 25 to 30 bushels. Naught caused expense save planting and harvesting, for the second crop went in on the stubble of the first, and the third on that of the second. June-grass seized the country; soil moisture exhausted, the land could not support both wheat and grass, and so the wheat died, and thousands of acres of this barbed brome whitened under the July sun. Other men are now painfully returning these lands te a producing condition. As if only to prove that the fault lay not in land, a single farmer in that part of the valley grew crops — every year. He, however, plowed deeply generally in the fall and grew but one crop in two seasons. Neither did he scorn the disk and spike-tooth harrow. His irrigated fields also prospered under careful manuring, rotation, irrigation, and weeding. To be sure, other people had varied with but incidental success, because of unsystematic farming on a small scale. Superstition, too, has played its unworthy part. There is a type of mind in which the mysterious dies hard. Even today

THE OLD AND THE NEW IN AGRICULTURE 343

there are a few men who persist in the belief that there is a close relationship between crop production and that astronomy which is found in almanacs. Intelligent farmers study the season and the soil conditions in order to determine the proper time for sowing and reaping, whereas a more slothful few still stick to the "dark" or the "light" of the moon as a guide. The day of astrological agriculture is long past. We stand on the newer and surer ground of scientific experimentation. The Old and the New Thus does the old survive beside the new. Pass six or eight years. In districts of extensive cultivation the wornout farm is as rare as was the well-kept one of ten years ago in that valley. Like a ghost, spreading a night-mare of consternation and fear, the old passed by, leaving in its wake the new, full of hope and scientific trust. For in most sections faith in dry-farms has sprung up. Just as the railroad and the telegraph carried our frontier across the West in a single lifetime, so the Experiment Station, the College with its Extension Department, and the new farmers are carrying scientific agriculture across in one generation. In spite of this, some still refuse to rotate alfalfa, oats, and sugar-beets, or to harrow the alfalfa after the first crop in order that they may rid the land of weevil and June-grass. The greater profit of better farming will soon stir these to action. In farm machinery the same progress is noted. The scythe, the cradle and the flail are still in the memory of middle-aged inhabitants; and yet mowers with six-foot cutter-bars, combined harvesters, disk harrows, and steam threshers and plows work daily upon thousand-acre farms. Hand plows and spike-tooth harrows still serve useful purposes. Although he must be upto-date, the farmer must beware of machinery and methods too new to be tried thoroughly. Education goes apace. Every means of communication carries ideas to the wide-awake. With eyes open and senses alert, the tiller of the soil catches each new truth heralded in farm paper, extension talk, book, or bulletin. The recent idea of progress goes everywhere, and opens the way for still more recent ones, and these in turn for others yet to come. We have just begun to realize how vast is the field of experimental agriculture and home economics. The labor union protects the industrial worker; the Farm Bureau furnishes a rallying point for rural betterment. As we have outgrown the old, so shall we wrench loose the bands that now bind us. Hereafter the farmer will have something to say about his future. Only thus can his problems be solved.