TRANSACTIONS OP STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 107 



ALFALFA-GROWING IN CALIFORNIA. 



By REV. B. EDMISTON, of Riverside. 



Our Greatest Product of the Future. — Were I called upon to express 

 an opinion as to what single product of the soil would probably assume 

 the greatest importance in our State within the next century, I should 

 not hesitate to say alfalfa. As a forage plant for general use, as far as 

 I know, it has no equal in value. This may be said not only in regard 

 to its enormous productiveness, but as well in regard to its excellence as 

 a feed, particularly for horses and cattle. For teams doing ordinary 

 work on the farm, and for milch cows, it answers the purpose of both 

 hay and grain. I feed no grain to my teams, and they not only stand 

 work well, but they keep in good condition and in good flesh. 



With our almost perpetual summer and with soil specially adapted 

 to its growth, who can estimate the extent to which its production may 

 be pushed in almost every part of our State? And who in imagination 

 can look forward to the middle of the twentieth century and contemplate 

 the vast number of profitable dairies, the fat beef cattle and fine horses 

 raised on alfalfa, either in pastures or after made into hay, without 

 pleasure and gratitude to the Bountiful Giver of so rich a heritage? 



Requirements. — But I am reminded that alfalfa can be successfully 

 grown only where water for irrigation is abundant. However, there 

 are occasional tracts of moist land where it does fairly well, though 

 its cultivation on such land is attended with difficulties unknown on 

 land which must be irrigated. The busy gopher works three hundred 

 and sixty-five days in the year. And there are grasses, particularly 

 Bermuda grass, which spread on such land with great rapidity and in 

 a few years destroy the alfalfa. In making such large claims as to the 

 extent and importance which alfalfa culture is destined to assume in 

 the near future, I am met by the objection that the scarcity of water 

 will for all time be an insuperable difficulty in the way. It is true that 

 in many places water can only be obtained at great cost of capital and 

 labor. Nevertheless, we cannot doubt but that there are millions of 

 acres of choice lands suitable for the purpose now lying waste which 

 will be provided with water long before the middle of the twentieth 

 century. It is only a question of capital and labor collecting and 

 saving the enormous precipitation in our mountain districts. The rich 

 valleys and plains extending from the southeast to the northwest in an 

 unbroken chain for eight hundred miles were not planned by the Great 

 Architect to remain forever waste. Whoever thinks so has studied the 

 greatness of our State to little purpose. 



