134 AGRICULTURE 



4. What does it cost to produce an acre of alfalfa and 

 harvest it? Of clover? Of timothy? Find which is the 

 most profitable crop based on market value of hay. (It 

 must, however, be taken into account that alfalfa is of 

 greatest value in renewing the soil.) 



2. The Growing of Alfalfa 



Alfalfa is one of the oldest plants known. It was 

 known in Greece five hundred years B. C., and raised in 

 England before Columbus discovered America. It has been 

 known in this country for more than a century, but only 

 recently has it become of any great importance as a farm 

 crop. And even yet, its value is but little understood, and 

 the methods of its growth are not generally known. 



Acreage of alfalfa. At present barely one-tenth as 

 many acres are devoted to alfalfa as to clover and tim- 

 othy, and one-ninth as many as are put in wheat. We have 

 twenty acres in corn to every acre in alfalfa. Yet the 

 amount of land devoted to alfalfa is increasing every year, 

 and it will soon become one of our principal forage crops. 



The alfalfa region. The alfalfa region of the United 

 States at present lies principally west of the Mississippi 

 River. Out of about five million acres of alfalfa raised in 

 the entire country, Kansas grows one million acres, or one- 

 fifth of the crop. 



Alfalfa is especially adapted to dry soils and climates, 

 and is therefore of the greatest value in the semi-arid re- 

 gions of the West. Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho and 

 other western states are using alfalfa to make fertile many 

 acres of soil almost barren for other crops. 



The great corn belt states are admirably adapted to the 

 raising of alfalfa, but have as yet done little with it. For 

 example, the following are the ranks of these states in the 

 production of alfalfa in the United States: Ohio, nine- 



