MAKING HOMES 



25 



in the Year Books and in various issues of the Crop Reporter published by 

 the United States Department of Agriculture. No estimate is 

 Getting at published of the acreage and yields by counties, the acreage, 

 the Right the total production and the value of the crop being given for 



Figures. the whole state. Tn the old, thickly settled states where the 



farming industry is well established, fairly satisfactory results 

 may perhaps be obtained l)y the system of collecting crop statistics which 

 the Department of Agriculture has adopted, but it does not produce satis- 

 factory results in ^lontana where the area of land in cultivation increases 

 each year at a rate almost unprecedented in the history of the development 

 of the farming regions of the United States. Under such conditions it 

 may not be surprising that crop correspondents of the government have 

 failed to report manv thousands of acres that have been planted to crops 



The Homesteader in Montana Grows Plenty of Potatoes ] 



— m.»t^^^ 



for the first time in each of the last three years and, consequently, that 

 the department has not allowed for a sufficient percentage of increase. In 

 the opinion of this office, an opinion held also, it is believed, 1)\- members 

 of the staff of the Agricultural Experiment Station, railroad and elevator 

 men, secretaries of commercial clubs and other observers, the estimate of 

 the Diepartment of Agriculture of the acreage of staple crops is far below 

 the true amount. To estimate the acreage in staple crops to be twenty-five 

 per cent greater than the government's figures wduld seem to be conser\-a- 

 tive. Hbwjever, as the statistics of agriculture contained in the census 

 reports and in the publications of the Department of Agriculture are the 

 only official ones available, they are given in the fm-m of tables in this 

 chapter for the State at large. 



— Montana Winters are mild. 



