12 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Crop Conditions of 1915. 



General crop conditions throughout the State are reported as 

 normal, although seldom have we seen a year with such varia- 

 tions of weather, from no rain in March and little during April, 

 May and June to floods during July and August, while the fall 

 has been fairly dry. One would naturally think that these con- 

 ditions would have had a greater adverse effect on crops, but 

 we have got to view a season as a whole and not from any one 

 period of it; so this year, while we have had our bad weather 

 in long periods, so also have we had our good weather in long 

 periods. The whole State was remarkably free from early fall 

 frosts, and consequently late maturing crops have had a chance 

 to develop. More fall plowing was reported than usual, and 

 late seeded ground looks unusually good. 



Hay, our most valuable crop in point of production, was 

 much injured in quality this year by heavy rains during the 

 cutting season. These rains had been preceded by very dry 

 weather, which had checked the growth of grass, with the result 

 that almost throughout the State the first crop of hay was low 

 in both quantity and quality. 



These same heavy summer rains, however, benefited those 

 farmers who were fortunate enough to have a second cutting 

 of hay, and the rowen crop was unusually large. This made 

 up to some extent for the short first crop, and prices at the 

 present time are exceptionally high. The farm price in Massa- 

 chusetts on November 1, as reported by the United States De- 

 partment of Agriculture, was $22.70 per ton. It is worthy of 

 note that the price given for Massachusetts is the highest in 

 the Union, the next highest being Connecticut, with $22.50 

 per ton, and ranging from there down to North Dakota, where 

 native hay is reported to be bringing only $5.40 at the farm. 

 This item is another bit of evidence of the excellence of Massa- 

 chusetts markets for farm products. 



Our corn crop is reported the same in size as last year, but 

 the price is 82 cents, against 96 cents in 1914, probably due to 

 the fact that the crop throughout the country is almost a 

 record one. Oats, not a very important crop in Massachusetts, 

 is almost the same as last year in both quantity and price, 

 304,000 bushels for the former, 56 cents for the latter. 



