THE DIVERSIFIED FARM. 



In diversified farming by irrigation lies the salvation of agriculture. (fl 



THE AGE wants to brighten the pages of its Diversified Farm department and with 

 this object in view it requests its readers everywhere to send in photographs and pic- 

 tures of fields, orchards and farm homes-, prize-taking horses, cattle, sheep or hogs. 

 Also sketches or plans of convenient and commodious barns, hen houses, corn cribs 

 etc. Sketches of labor-saving devices, such as ditch cleaners and watering troughs. 

 A good illustration of a windmill irrigation plant is always interesting. Will you help 

 us improve the appearance of THE AGE? 



SURPRISING FIGURES OF AGRICUL- 

 TURAL IMPORTS. 

 BY W. C. FITZSIMMONS. 



Probably nine-tenths of the people of 

 the United States have no proper concep- 

 tion of the vast annual importations into 

 the United States of purely agricultural pro- 

 ducts. We are distinctively an agricultural 

 nation and always have been. We had in 

 1890,4,561,641 farms, comprising 623,218- 

 619 acres, of which 57.4 per cent were 

 under cultivation, and yet we continue, 

 year after year, to import enormous quan- 

 tities of products from other countries 

 which might be grown with profit on nearly 

 every farm in America. Especial atten- 

 tion is invited to- the following remarkable 

 table prepared by the Department of Ag- 

 riculture for the year ending with June. 



This table shows that more than 50 per 

 cent of all our imports are of agricultural 

 products. While we can never hope to 

 produce a home supply of coffee or cocoa, 

 yet all the sugar products, all animals and 

 their products, all fibres and nearly all the 

 miscellaneous articles mentioned in con- 

 nection with the above table, can be and 

 ought to be produced in the United States, 

 Among the "miscellaneous" items is that 

 of wine, for which we have paid foreigners 

 $35.896,394 during the past four years, 

 $16,631,130 being for still wine easily pro- 

 duced of as good quality in California, the 

 balance being for Champagne. During 



the four years under review the beans and 

 peas imported cost $5,888,592; potatoes, 



$6,327,716; rice, $12,755,409 and tobacco, 

 $39,307,343. All these products can be 

 raised by our own farmers in the greatest 

 abundance, and while they are scratching 



