408 



SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE 



August, 1922 



successfully tackled by many of your inves- 

 tigators. 



The difficulty then arises when contem- 

 plating one's forms — be they Timothy, 

 Cocksfoot or Red Clover — to decide which 

 under pasture conditions will be persistent 

 yet bulky, palatable yet nutritious. It is a 

 formula for helping our choice, criteria upon 

 which to base a sound judgment, that we 

 want and it is along these lines that I feel 

 there is scope for infinite researcli and for the 

 developing of a very elaborate field tech- 

 nique, but concerning which it would at pres- 

 ent be premature for me to offer any sug- 

 gestions. 



I would like to say a few further words 

 on what I deem to be the fundamental ob- 

 stacles to realization of the ideal of improved 

 herbage plants. I refer to seed production 

 and to safeguarding every district against 

 the use of the seed of herbage and forage 

 plants not suitable to its needs. These are 

 appropriate subjects to consider here today, 

 for I believe they can only be solved by Im- 

 perial action. 



Let me take as an example the case of our 

 west of England strains of Red Clover, of 

 poor seed quality. If purity of strain means 

 anything, why should you in Canada not re- 



ceive stock seed of approved strains and grow 

 seed of impeachable quality for us.'' I would 

 like to see some well planned co-operative 

 experiments conducted on these lines. The 

 same would doubtless apply to Timothy and 

 perhaps New Zealand should be doing the 

 same w'ith Cocksfoot. Then we should not 

 allow seed tliat is unsuitable to pass from 

 one part of the Empire to another, or from 

 a foreign country into one corner of the 

 Empire to be reshipped to another. We want 

 a close eye kept on the movements of seeds 

 generally, not only from country to country 

 but from district to district. 



The Imperial Bureau of Mycology has met 

 with immediate success. Why not an Im- 

 perial Bureau of Agriculture? Nothing I 

 believe will bring this need homie to us as 

 much as the great impetus everywhere given 

 to crop improvement. The plant breeder 

 needs to comb the world for species and 

 forms. We should at least have the machin- 

 ery for combing our Empire, for exchanging 

 strains, for trying each other's strains, for 

 growing each other's seeds. A central Bu- 

 reau would inevitably make for that close 

 co-operation which should surely exist be- 

 tween the growing army of agricultural in- 

 vestigators throughout our Empire. 



Marketing and Related Activities in the Bureau 



of Agricultural Economics of the United 



States Department of Agriculture 



W A WHEET.ER 



W. A. WHEELER, 

 Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. 

 (Abstract of lecture at the C. S. T. A. 

 Convention) 



The development of a study of marketing 

 problems by the Federal Government was 

 begun in the Department of Agriculture be- 

 cause of the close relation between market- 

 ing and production. The demands for im- 

 provement in the system of marketing farm 

 products came from the producers who de- 

 sired means of securing a fair price for their 

 products. As the work has progressed it 

 has been found that much of the remedial 

 work falls upon the farmers themselves in 

 the form of adjustment of ))roduction to mar- 

 ket demands, better grading of ))roduct to 

 be shipi)ed. and the proper packing of the 

 product, so that it will arrive u])on the mar- 

 ket in good condition. The problems of pro- 



duction and marketing are so intimately in- 

 terwoven that there will be no effort in this 

 brief discussion to separate out the purely 

 marketing functions of the department, but 

 rather to give the marketing work in its set- 

 ting along with the other economic work of 

 the de])artnient. 



The rapid development of legislation hav- 

 ing to do with marketing and the regulation 

 of marketing agencies, the administration of 

 which has been delegated to the Department 

 of Agriculture, brought about the organiza- 

 tion first of an Office of Markets, later ex- 

 panded into a bureau, then expanded fur- 

 ther by consolidation with the statistical and 

 crop-estimating bureau of the department, 



