70 WHEAT 



CHAPTER VI 

 HARVEST AND YIELD 



THE AVERAGE YIELD 



Because of the relatively high price of the grain 

 and the relatively low cost of production a good 

 field of wheat is one of the best paying of farm 

 crops. The yields are sometimes very large. The 

 writer has produced a yield of sixty bushels of 

 Turkey wheat per acre at the Kansas experiment 

 station, not only in small plots but in a large 

 field. Even larger yields have been reported in 

 Kansas and in the Palouse country in Oregon, 

 where yields of seventy bushels per acre have been 

 secured. Yet in spite of the great producing 

 capacity of wheat under favorable conditions, the 

 average yield in the United States is less than 

 fourteen bushels per acre. Compare this with the 

 average yields of wheat for the last decade in 

 several European countries Germany twenty- 

 nine bushels, Great Britain thirty-three bushels 

 and Denmark forty bushels per acre, and we will 

 see that the yields in the United States may be 

 and should be greatly increased. 



The low average yield of wheat in the United 

 States is due to two primary causes poor farming 

 and damage to the crops by the elements. Much 

 wheat is very carelessly planted. The farmer is 

 continuously up against the problems of a decreas- 

 ing soil fertility and a consequently decreasing 



