12 AGRICULTURAL CONDITIONS IN SOUTHERN NEW YORK, 



date dairies show excellent incomes. The greatest drawback the 

 dairyman has is the feed bill, which absorbs so much of his income. 

 The Bureau of Plant Industry has very emphatically called atten- 

 tion to this condition, and in a recent Farmers' Bulletin" has shown 

 how a large number of New England dairymen have succeeded in 

 irrowing their own feed and so saved the feed bill. 



In order to be successful in any of these lines there must be devel- 

 oped a cropping system designed not only to j^roduce all the roughage 

 necessary, but a large part of the grain ration as well, for the profits 

 in the future will be largely measured by the ability of the farm to 

 produce the feed required for the maintenance of the stock kept 

 upon it. It has been demonstrated again and again by practical, 

 successful farmers that it is perfectly possible to grow on New York 

 farms not only the roughage but a large part of the grain ration 

 required for a reasonable number of stock. 



The whole matter then reduces itself to the need of a better system 

 of management. The stock farm must be so planned that it will be 

 self-sustaining. The problem is not a difficult one because we have 

 a good deal of successful experience to draw upon. A short rotation 

 with clover as a basis and with grain and forage crops, according to 

 their adaptation, can be devised from successful experience. Instead 

 of selling off stock when the crops get short and abandoning the 

 farms when they grow less productive, conditions must be studied 

 and difficulties remedied. 



THE GROWING OF FRUIT. 



There is good evidence for the belief that a strong line of devel- 

 opment for the so-called abandoned farm land of the East is the 

 growing of fruit, especially apples. The fact that the earhest settlers 

 in central, southern, and western New York found the apple suc- 

 cessfully grown by the Indian shows its natural adaptation. (See 

 fig. 4.) The culture of the apple has become general in only a few 

 sections, where the conditions are supposedly more favorable. The 

 evidence at hand is that the higher class of fruit produced in these 

 sections is largely due to the better cultural methods employed 

 and not, as commonly thought, to better natural adaptation. 



There are many examples of the successful growing of apples and 

 pears in the area under consideration. Some of these orchards are 

 as good and as productive as those in the highly developed fruit 

 sections. In many cases old Indian apple trees and trees planted 

 fifty or more years ago are still to be seen bearing fine fruit. The 

 soil conditions are very similar and in some cases better than those 



a Farmers' Bulletin 337, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, eutitled "Cropping Systems 

 for New England Dairy Farms," 1908. 

 [Cir. 64] 



