THE GENESEE FAKMEE. 



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being over 400,000 bushels more than was grown in all New England. Now, the 

 climate of the Genesee valley differs but little from that of the Connecticut valley ; the 

 annual fall of rain is about the same in both regions, and the atmosphere, with all its 

 aliment for wheat plants, is probably as favorable in one valley as the other ; while wheat 

 in New England has been worth, on an average, some fifty per cent, more for the last 

 ten years than in Western New York. With such powerful inducements to grow wheat 

 in New England, how does it happen that a county 860 miles west of you, which now 

 annually produces a million bushels of corn, a half million bushels of oats, 120,000 

 bushels of barley, 500,000 bushels of potatoes, 300,000 pounds of wool, 65,000 tons 

 of hay, not to name dairy products, pork, fruit, peas, beans, and vegetables, grows also 

 a third more wheat than Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, 

 and Rhode Island put together ? There is a law that governs this matter, not written 

 in any of your statute books — not taught nor studied in one New England school, 

 which is sadly overlooked by all our agricultural societies — a law that must, neverthe- 

 less, be generally understood before American agriculture can rise to be anything more 

 than a mere empirical art. If New England farmers say in their hearts, "We will not 

 cultivate agricultural science," tell me candidly, v?hether they may reasonably expect 

 the fruits of this science ? 



Whatever you may say on this subject, T feel it to be my duty to tell you, as I do all 

 others, that American planting at the South, and American forming at the North, are 

 the most destructive to the land under cultivation of any that can be found in the wide 

 world. Americans do not see this, simply because they refuse to study their agricultural 

 statistics, and compare them carefully with the statistics of other nations. Having a 

 whole continent to desolate by taking every thing out of the soil that can by any 

 possibility form cotton, tobacco, grain, and provisions, which Nature placed there, our 

 people never stop to consider the fact that the best soils rarely contain more than one 

 part in a thousand of the atoms that make their daily bread. After these shall have 

 been removed in grass, grain, cotton, tobacco, wool, and the flesh of animals, and 

 thoughtlessly wasted in cities and elsewhere, is it not obvious that general sterility 

 will prevail over the face of the republic ? Now, it contains a fair supply of the raw 

 material for making human food arfd raiment ; but the fact is not to be disguised that 

 we employ five million laborers, and five thousand million dollars capital in the great 

 work of taking from the virgin lands of the United States their elements of fertility, 

 and sending them to distant or home markets, regardless of the interest which the next 

 and all succeeding generations have in the enduring fruitfulness of the earth. We say 

 that posterity has done nothing for us, and therefore we are under no obligation to those 

 that come after us. This is false reasoning ; for posterity may properly expect that 

 every generation shall leave the earth, which is to feed all and clothe all, as rich in the 

 elements of grain and other crops as they found it. What harm have persons yet 

 unborn done to the twenty-five millions now in the United States, that we should 

 impoverish one acre of ground to their obvious injury, seeing that in twenty-five years 

 fifty millions of people will need twice as much of the fruits of the earth as we now do 

 in the States where we reside? Conceding that we may innocently do all we can to 

 consume and waste the few precious atoms at and near the surface of the ground which 

 render it productive, are we under no obligation to establish institutions designed to 

 teach our children and grand-children a better system of tillage and husbandry than that 

 which impoverishes four-fifths of the soil now under the plow ? If wo find it somewhat 

 difiicult to Command a full supply of manure with all our present large resources, how 

 are succeeding generations to meet their vastly larger wants from the same area, after 

 the land has parted with all the raw material of crops on wjiich wo now draw so 

 liberally for our annual harvests ? Will not their difficulties bo ten-fold greater than 

 our's, unless their superior knowledge shall give them the command of agricultural 



