PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS, 1925 



ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE NEW HAMPSHIRE 

 AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION 



For the Year 1925 



The past year has been a notable one in the Experiment Station's 

 history. At almost the same time that the State Legislature was provid- 

 ing a permanent foundation for the University as a whole through the 

 passage of the Mill Tax Bill, the Federal Congress made possible a broad- 

 ening and an expansion of agricultural research through the passage of the 

 PurnelLAct. i-^ 



" The main object of the increased federal appropriation was to enable 

 the various states to expand their investigations, particularly in the fields 

 of agricultural economics, home economics, and rural sociology. In New 

 Hampshire the accumulation of the most pressing needs for research 

 work will in the main, it is hoped, be satisfied by the new fund. 



A complete copy of the Purnell bill will be found in a supplement to 

 this report. This act ''for the more complete endowment of agricultural 

 experiment stations," which was passed by the House of Representatives 

 February 10, 1925, went into effect July 1 of this year. It provides for 

 "paying the necessary expenses of conducting investigations or making 

 experiments bearing directly on the production, manufacture, prepara- 

 tion, use, distribution, and marketing of agricultural products, and 

 including such scientific researches as have for their purpose the estab- 

 lishment and maintenance of a permanent and efficient agricultural 

 industry, and such economic and sociological investigations as . have 

 for their purpose the development and improvement of the rural home 

 and rural life, and for printing and disseminating the results of said 

 researches." 



The act appropriates $20,000 for the present fiscal year with annual 

 increments of $10,000 until the total is reached of $60,000 per year, making 

 the total federal contribution to the station (including the Hatch and 

 Adams funds) $90,000 annually. 



As a result of this appropriation, it has already been possible to start 

 work in nine new projects in New Hampshire during the present year. 



1. Agricultural Economics. For many years there has been an acute 

 need for marketing investigations in the state. Hitherto under the 

 funds available, it has been possible to deal only with problems of produc- 

 tion. We have had no basic facts on which to build the marketing 

 campaign which has been cried for in many quarters. It has seemed 

 that a first step should be to make a thoroughgoing investigation of the 

 economic balance between the production and consumption of those 

 products which can successfully be grown within the borders of the state. 



How much money is leaving the state for foodstuffs which can be grown 

 here? Are we in a position to compete successfully with other states in 

 such production? Upon the answer to these questions much of our 

 agricultural future hangs. 



The object of the economic study which we are undertaking is to 

 ascertain the consumption demand within the state of those products 



