SUGGESTIONS IN WHEAT CULTURE. 



BY W. C. FITZSIMMOXS. 



AMERICAN farmers annually plant nearly forty 

 million acres to wheat and reap a pitiful har- 

 vest of about thirteen bushels per acre. Three hun- 

 dred years ago the English farmers were realizing 

 about the same yield per acre, but at this time they 

 confidently count on a yield of double that amount. 

 The acre out-turn in the United States is but little, if 

 any, in advance of that in India, where we can 

 scarcely believe the soil of the twenty-six million 

 acres devoted to wheat is more fertile than our own- 

 The climatic conditions obtaining in the Punjab are 

 certainly not better adapted to cereal production 

 than those of a vast region devoted to the crop in 

 this country. Nor can we for a moment suppose that 

 the general intelligence of the Indian wheat farmers 

 is as high as that of Americans engaged in the same 

 occupation. Though wheat has been grown in India 

 from time immemorial, it is only in recent years and 

 under irrigation that she has become so formidable a 

 competitor to ourselves in the wheat markets of the 

 world. But in spite of the lower intelligence of the 

 Oriental wheat farmer, and in spite of the fact that 

 his crop is often grown upon lands that were thou- 

 sands of years old in cultivation at the time when 

 Columbus sailed westward across the unknown sea, 

 still the Indian wheat grower produces as great a 

 yield per acre as the American whose virgin lands 

 have been, in comparison, scarcely touched. There 

 must be some reason for this, then, other than supe- 

 rior general intelligence or greater fertility of soil in 

 the Orient. The irrigation of wheat fields to some 

 extent in India is a main factor in the successful com- 

 petition with the superior American intelligence and 

 superior American appliances for gathering the har- 

 vest and transporting it to a market. This, coupled 

 with the low labor cost must, so long as present con- 

 ditions obtain, operate to the continued detriment of 

 American wheat growers in the struggle with those of 

 India and Egypt. We must improve our method and 

 curtail the waste of labor, manure and money in the 

 production of a half crop of wheat upon a double area 

 of land. Except in limited sections, it is certainly 

 true that the average American farmer does not 

 practice the wisest economy or proceed upon the 

 most approved lines in the production of wheat. Our 

 methods, as practiced in the greater wheat-growing 

 states, are primitive in the extreme and wholly incap- 

 able of defense on the plane of scientific husbandry. 

 The English, Scotch and Irish wheat growers are far 

 in advance of us in their methods of preparing the 



land as well as in the care taken to maintain or in- 

 crease its fertility by a judicious system of fertiliza- 

 tion and cropping. Thousands of American wheat 

 farmers never think of fertilizing their lands, and 

 even burn the straw and stubble of one crop in pre- 

 paration for another. Success demands that the land 

 shall be thoroughly and scientifically prepared, and 

 the seed to be sown must be carefully selected by 

 close screening and assortment, to the end that only 

 fully developed grains shall be sown. Then, too, long 

 experience in some places has impressed upon cer- 

 tain of the most intelligent wheat farmers the fact 

 that a lesser quantity of seed sown upon a properly 

 prepared seed bed will give better returns than a 

 much larger quantity of seed sown upon land not 

 scientifically fitted for its reception. In a word, most 

 American wheat growers plant too much seed, and 

 do not properly prepare their ground. A very com- 

 mon practice throughout a large part of the cereal 

 areas of the United States is to sow a bushel and a 

 half of seed per acre. In at least ninety per cent, of 

 cases this is entirely too much. In some large sec- 

 tions five pecks is the standard amount for sowing an 

 acre of land. This, also, is too great a quantity, if the 

 conditions leading to the best success in wheat grow- 

 ing are nearly fulfilled. 



Careful and prolonged experiment has shown that 

 under easily secured conditions wheat plants will 

 stool into ten or twelve culms, each of which will 

 carry twenty to sixty grains. This would indicate a 

 yield several times as great as that ordinarily obtained 

 and even greater than that ever reached on a. 

 large scale. From this we must infer that a great 

 part of the seed usually planted does not germinate at 

 all, or fails to mature a grain-bearing plant. With a 

 possible yield of several hundred fold, it is scarcely 

 creditable to American farmers that they go along 

 year after year contentedly reaping a ten fold or twelve 

 fold crop of seventy-five cent wheat. In some sections 

 of the northwest, certain advanced wheat growers 

 have reduced the amount of seed sown, and have 

 been surprised at the result. In fact, it has been 

 shown that on properly prepared ground a half 

 bushel of the best seed wheat brings a better average 

 yield than two or three times as much seed sown in 

 the ordinary manner. 



The writer once knew a progressive farmer in 

 Michigan who made experiments and profited by 

 them. From the usual six pecks of seed wheat per 

 acre, he gradually cut down the amount each year, 

 noting carefully the effects of his slight reduction. 

 He found that by putting his ground in condition to 

 receive and bring forth a large proportion of the seed 



