THE EFFECT OF CERTAIN CROPPING SYSTEMS ON 

 THE YIELD AND QUALITY OF HAVANA TOBACCO 



By A. B. Beaumont, Professor of Agronomy, M. E. Snell, Technical Assis- 

 tant in Agronomy, and E. B. Holland, Research Professor of Chemistry'. 



Introduction 



The earliest New England colonists learned from the American Indians how to 

 grow a number of native American crops including maize and tobacco. Although 

 tobacco was no doubt grown in a small way throughout the colonial period, it did 

 not become a commercial crop in Massachusetts until about one hundred years 

 ago. Smith (17) set the date of commencement of extensive cultivation of tobacco 

 in this State at 1835, when the farmers of the Connecticut Valley found that the 

 soil of this region was well adapted to the production of a very fine leaf for the 

 manufacture of cigars. 



All the commercial tobacco produced in Massachusetts is now grown in the 

 Connecticut Valley. Total production in this State rapidly increased from less 

 than 100,000 pounds in 1840 to almost 7,000,000 pounds at the close (1864) of the 

 Civil War (10.) With more or less fluctuation there was a gradual decline in 

 production to about 3,000,000 pounds in 1895-96, a period of rather low prices. 

 Then followed, with a return of better prices, a gradual expansion of acreage and 

 consequent increase in production. The maximum production recorded to date 

 was 15,500,000 pounds grown on 10,000 acres in 1920. From 1920 to 1930 there 

 was a gradual decline in acreage and production, and from 1930 to the present 

 (here has been a sharp reduction in acreage, production, and price. In 1929, 

 11,600,000 pounds of tobacco valued at $4,941,600 were produced on 8,000 acres. 



Early Practices in Tobacco Growing 



\\'hen tobacco culture was introduced into the Connecticut Valley a variety of 

 crops necessary to a self-sufificient agriculture was grown. Chief among these 

 were grass, maize, oats, meslin (peas and oats), rye, wheat, broom corn, hops, 

 barleyand buckwheat. It was natural that there should be some rotation of these 

 crops with any newly introduced crop such as tobacco, and this appears to have 

 been the case. In early reports of the Board of Agriculture rotation of tobacco 

 with other crops is implied, and Stockbridge (18) in a paper on crop rotation pre- 

 pared in 1869 definitely points out that wheat and clover should be grown in the 

 .same rotation. A rotation consisting of tobacco (2 yrs.), wheat, clover, and grass, 

 was recommended. The beneficial effect of the tobacco and hay crops on the 

 wheat appears to have been fully as important in the minds of the growers as the 

 benefits accruing to the tobacco. 



Again, Smith (17), writing in 1882, mentions the practice of rotation of tobacco 

 and the value of the rotation to the succeeding crops. He also points out the 

 benefit of a certain amount of continuous culture of tobacco. "In the first place, 

 I would prefer land upon which tobacco has grown the two years previous : — I 

 would not grow tobacco more than three or four years in succession on the same 

 piece, for the reason that I wish to grow this crop in rotation over the whole farm 



'Credit is given Dr. J. P. Jones, formerly Research Professor of Agronomy, for careful super- 

 vision of the field work reported in this bulletin, for the period 1924-1929, inclusive. 



