256 agricuIvTure; of maine. 



OPPORTUNITIES FOR CORN BREEDING IN MAINE. 

 By Dr. Raymond P^arl, Orono. 



The time has come in American agriculture when the prac- 

 tice of intensive methods must be seriously undertaken. In the 

 history of the country up to the past decade we have been able to 

 employ the most wasteful agricultural methods in the world 

 without particularly feeling the evil effects of such practice. 

 This ability temporarily to escape the consequences of a care- 

 less and wasteful agriculture has been due to different circum- 

 stances in different parts of the country. In the West there 

 were always new and virgin lands to migrate to when the yields 

 got low on the old ones. In New England when the farm 

 ceased to pay by the "good" old methods one could work at day 

 wages on the river, or in the shop, or teaming, or as a last re- 

 sort take summer boarders. All these things, however, are but 

 makeshift solutions of the economic problem confronting the 

 farmer. The virgin lands are now all gone in this country, or 

 very nearly so, and with increasing immigration and increased 

 efficiency in the organization of labor, both from the laborer's 

 and the employer's standpoint, the odd job laborer, part farmer 

 and part something else, is finding himiself in a worse position 

 all the time. The summer boarder is at best an uncertain crop, 

 expensive and difficult to cultivate. 



The true solution of the problem, and the one which far- 

 sighted farmers who form seed improvement associations have 

 grasped the import of, is the practice of a more intensive agri- 

 culture. By intensive agriculture one only means farming in 

 such a way as to get the maximum return off a given area of 

 land. This means as primary factors, improved seed, and right 

 methods of culture. Here lies the reason why we must prac- 

 tice seed breeding, and the reason wh}^ this association has a 

 work to do. 



Now all this which has been said is very well in its way per- 

 haps, but after all pretty general. To get down to the ground, 

 just what does corn breeding offer the Maine farmer? What 

 are the opportunities in this direction in this State? Such op- 

 portunities, it seems to me, lie open in two general directions. 

 These are: 



I. The improvement of corn as a farm crop to be used on 

 the farm. 



