DAIRY, SEED IMPROVEMENT, STOCK BREEDERS MEETINGS. 2/5 



Members of the party visited some of the important potato 

 growing centers in both the upper and lower peninsula of 

 Michigan. Near Port Huron in St. Clair county, where the 

 soil is a sandy loam, some leaf-roll, wilt and Rhizoctonia in- 

 jury were observed. The last two mentioned were particularly 

 bad on a few fields. 



The colony of Danish potato growers already mentioned is 

 located not far from Grand Rapids. They have a light, sandy 

 soil, formerly heavily wooded with white pine. The lumber- 

 men left it a barren waste of stumps and drifting sand, with 

 little or no vegetation. In fact, the stumps of many of the 

 pines are still there, but they are now utilized by their present 

 owners for fencing. You can go for xniles and miles in this 

 section and see no other fences than those made of pine 

 stumps tipped over on the side with roots attached. The results 

 which these Danes have accomplished since they came there 

 20 or 30 years ago are little short of marvelous, and this has 

 all been brought about by a system of farm management 

 which includes the growing of livestock, clover and potatoes. 

 General farming is practiced but dairying appears to be the lead- 

 ing industry. Clover and potatoes are the chief crops, nearly 

 every farmer growing from five to ten acres of the latter. Some 

 diseases were found here but these were not serious. 



The potato industry is being developed in the northern 

 peninsula of Michigan in the vicinity of Houghton. This lo- 

 cality appears to be especially adapted to the raising of seed, 

 and as yet it is quite free from disease. 



Wisconsin, already a leading potato state, har wonderful 

 possibilities ahead in the line of development. Wisconsin, like 

 Maine, has really not yet begiui to raise potatoes and has a 

 much greater unused area to the northward, adapted to this 

 purpose, than Maine. The potato soils of northern Wis- 

 consin are not, according to my observations and from what I 

 can learn, equal to those of northern Maine. The most of our 

 observations in Wisconsin on this trip were made in Waupaca, 

 Portage and Chippewa counties in the central and somewhat 

 north of the central part of the state. 



The soils in these sections are somewhat sandy, but not so 

 much so as in Michigan. They are underlaid by a clay sub- 



