1T2 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



food is enormous, but precisely how much per cent, of nutri- 

 ment there is in the turnip, I don't remember. The solid part 

 is about ten per cent. 



Since the meeting at Pittsfield, I have turned to the follow- 

 ing statement made by me in 1861 : — " The practical values as 

 obtained by experiments in feeding are : of hay, one hundred 

 pounds are equivalent to three hundred pounds of Swedish 

 turnips, four hundred pounds of mangel-wurzel, two hundred 

 and fifty pounds of carrots or fifty-two pounds of corn." 



Mr. Plunkett. I believe the best authorities give the Swed- 

 ish turnip about eight per cent. Then a bushel of them, 

 weighing sixty pounds, would give about five pounds of nutri- 

 ment. A hundred pounds of meal gives you about seventy-five 

 pounds of nutriment. If you pay $2.25 a bushel, you are 

 paying three cents a pound for nutriment. Swedish turnips, 

 then, are worth about fifteen cents a bushel for feed. Can the 

 farmers of Massachusetts afford to raise them, store them, and 

 feed them out at the value of fifteen cents a bushel ? For it is 

 a money question, after all. The question is, not whether cattle 

 and horses take it, but can you afford it ? We want to know 

 how to make money. We can buy grain in different forms. 

 We can buy it by making cotton cloths and yarns and woollen 

 goods. We can produce grain and meat in other forms besides 

 raising them ; but what we want to know is, how we can pro- 

 duce them with the least possible cost to ourselves. No doubt, 

 we can raise great crops, but will it pay to raise them ? We 

 talk about raising carrots, but to make it profitable to raise 

 carrots is another thing. If the Swedish turnip is not worth 

 more than fifteen cents a bushel as food, can we afford to raise 

 it? 



I venture to say, that no practical farmer, who works himself 

 and lives by his farm — not a man who runs a farm for the sup- 

 port of his farmer and to pay the taxes, — I say, no practical 

 farmer can afford to raise these crops. We want something 

 that a man can afford to raise — something that he can raise to a 

 profit, and earn from his farm enough to pay for it. He must 

 make money, and that which makes money will commend itself 

 to the Yankee mind. Down on the Connecticut River, where 

 they are all Puritans, you might suppose they would not do 

 anything immoral, and yet the money argument has carried 



