DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. 2^t) 



first sign of spring, the farmer begins to plow and prepare for 

 the sowing of seeds. That is the way he pleads with the earth 

 to bring forth a harvest. It takes an immense amount of faith 

 to put seed in the barren earth and intelligently expect a har- 

 vest. Only a man of imagination, a poet, can see in the seed 

 delicious fruits ; but farmers lose more by bad seeds than from 

 almost any other preventable cause. They not only lose on the 

 amount paid for bad seed, but they often lose a crop and pos- 

 sibly a year's time. The states ought to take hold of this seed 

 question much more vigorously than they have, for it is a 

 fraud against which the innocent buyer has practically no pro- 

 tection. 



Let us, as members of the Maine Seed Improvement Asso- 

 ciation, do all we can to boom Maine by making it the leading 

 state for the production of high yielding seed, true to type and 

 of a quality to attract the buyers. I wish the growers of seed 

 in our state would take a stand to allow nothing to leave their 

 farms that could not carry its tag of merit. The economy, both 

 to producer and user, would be incalculable. It would follow 

 that other states would have to fall into line or lose out in the 

 race. 



What a shame it is that seed buyers from out of the state, 

 have to make the statement that unless more reliable seed is 

 forthcoming they will have to go elsewhere, that the grower 

 often loses as much on account of mixed seed as the seed costs 

 him. Why cannot the rogue grower be suppressed by law, and 

 the untrained educated, that the honest grower may live. Pow- 

 dery scab can do us little more harm than can the dissemination 

 of inferior seed stock. It is our duty to grow good seed and 

 push poor seed off the map of Maine, and in that way aid the 

 nation to produce more to help feed the world. 



The average farmer produces enough for his family's use 

 and sells enough to pay his taxes and the interest on his mort- 

 gage. Farmers do not live luxuriously. It is only recently that 

 they have begun to keep books and had scientific knowledge on 

 farming. Now that we must multiply our toil, use our brains 

 and feed the world, the best intelligence of America should be 

 used for the production of food. 



Who will feed the world ? That is a question we must answer 

 in deeds. The cost of living not only is to rise but it has risen. 



