Chop Eepoet fok the Month of July, 1909. 



Office of State Board of Agriculture, 

 Boston, Mass., August 2, 1909. 



The third number of the crop reports for the current year, 

 that for July, is herewith presented. An article on " Live 

 Stock in Massachusetts," by Prof. J. A. Foord, Professor 

 of Farm Administration at the Massachusetts Agricultural 

 College, will be found at the close of this bulletin. As is 

 shown by the figures in this article, stock raising, particu- 

 larly as relating to milch cows and the rearing of young 

 cattle, has been declining in this Commonwealth, more or 

 less steadily, for twenty years. To point out some of the 

 reasons for this, and suggest methods by which this decline 

 may possibly be checked, is the prime purpose of this article. 

 Professor Foord is a New England man by birth, training 

 and education, and has, therefore, a grasp of the peculiar 

 live-stock problems of New England second to none. 



Progress of the Season. 



The Crop Reporting Board of the Bureau of Statistics of 

 the Department of Agriculture (Crop Reporter for July, 

 1909) gives the preliminary estimate of the area of corn 

 planted as 109,006,000 acres, an increase of 7,218,000 acres, 

 or 7.1 per cent, as compared with the final estimate of last 

 year's acreage. The average condition of the crop on July 

 1 was 89.3, as compared with 82.8 on July 1, 1908, 80.2 

 in 1907, and 84.8, the ten-year average. 



The average condition of winter wheat on July 1, or when 

 harvested, was 82.4, as compared with 80.7 last month, 80.6 

 at harvest, 1908, 78.3 in 1907, and 79.6, the average at 

 time of harvest for the past ten years. The average con- 

 dition of spring wheat on July 1 was 92.7, as compared with 

 95.2 a month earlier, 89.4 on July 1, 1908, 87.2 in 1907, 



