10 LUCERNE CULTURE. 



opinion expressed by many progressive farmers in Victoria (Aus- 

 tralia) is that u the man who grows wheat under irrigation is m&d.' 7 " 

 Of course what is meant by this is that far better results can be- 

 got from good ground under irrigation than by growing wheat 

 upon it. Crops. such as potatoes, fruit trees, lucerne, vines, tobacco, 

 &c., under irrigation on gocd soil will yield far greater returns per" 

 acre than wheat growing. These special crops, however, all require 

 more ca>re and skilled labour than -cereal growing, hence, in our 

 opinion, there is a general run on cereal growing the lazy man's 

 crop. 



We have been cften struck with a curious, antiquated idea 

 prevailing amongst the generality of Karroo farmers, that if a man 

 has good ground under irrigation, he '" must grow wheat to make 

 his own bread, and thus save buying it." The fact that he would 

 be able, taking one year with another, to purchase five bags of wheat 

 by growing lucerne where he would only have raised one bag of 

 wheat, does not seem to trouble this "grow your own bread " far- 

 mer. We have recently heard of a Cradock farmer, with magnifi- 

 cent ground and water supply for lucerne growing, who has beeiL 

 growing wheat year after year, and only making a bare living out 

 of it. He was asked recently why he did net try lucerne growing- 

 He replied that he once did have a small patch of it in his lands, 

 and found the infernal "boschje" a great trouble tD eradicate from 

 his wheat lands ! He is probably still busy irrigating wheat crops 

 for locusts and rust spores. It is the uncertainty about cereal grow- 

 ing in the Karroo that knocks the bottom out of it. If the fruitless- 

 expenses of the years of failure be taken into account, the occasional 

 successful crop that is reaped has generally cost as much or more 

 than it sells for. We repeat that in cereal growing the expense is 

 exactly the same whether a crop is reaped or nothing is reaped. If 

 a proper profit and loss account were kept over say seven years of 

 wheat growing in the Karroo, it would 'be more readily seen by 

 farmers how. poor the average return is, and how much better it 

 would pay them to turn their valuable lands over to the use and 

 support of their livestock. Instead of doing this, however, with 

 the perversity of human nature, they go on, year after year, grum- 

 bling at the "rottenness of agriculture,' 1 while at the same time 

 allowing hundreds and often thousands of pounds worth of valu- 

 able stock to perish for want of food in "droughts, around the very 

 borders of their grain lands, inside of which a rust-eaten crop of 

 wheat stands bleaching and withering, and worthless. Often the 

 crop reaped would not pay for the hides of the stock tint have been 

 allowed to perish outside the fence, because inside the fence that 

 blessed cereal crop was standing on the ground, the half of which 

 would have produced fodder enough to have saved ever/ head of 

 stock from perishing for want of food. Good ground under irriga- 

 tion in the Karroo is far too valuable to sow year after year with 

 wheat, barley, oats, mealies and pumpkins. 



