WINTER-WHEAT PRODUCTION AT FORT HAYS STATION. 7 



overcome by other factors tending to improvement, such as better 

 varieties, treatment of seed, and the attainment of a higher average 

 degree of efficiency of methods and machinery. There has been an 

 ahnost perfect balance between the factors of decrease and increase. 

 With an agriculture established for 30 years by devoting nearly 75 

 per cent of the cultivated acreage to winter wheat an unchanged 

 average of yields has been maintained. 



COOPERATIVE EXPERIMENTS IN METHODS OF WHEAT PRODUCTION 

 AT THE FORT HAYS BRANCH STATION. ^ 



The Fort Hays branch station of the Kansas Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station is one of the points at which the Office of Dry-Land 

 Agriculture Investigations of the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture first arranged for cooperative work in the investigation of 

 methods of crop production. Field experiments in crop rotation and 

 cultural methods were started under this cooperation in 1906. The 

 work at that time was started on 100 plats. None of these have 

 been dropped nor their continuous history interrupted, but their num- 

 ber has been increased from time to time until 326 plats were occupied 

 in 1920. Of this number 136 were in winter v/heat. 



Other crops, presented in the order of the number of plats occu- 

 pied by each, are kafir, corn, oats, barley, spring wheat, milo, aKalfa, 

 brome-grass, sorghum, field peas, and winter rye. The two last men- 

 tioned are plowed under for green manure. 



In the first part of this bulletin figures were presented showing the 

 acreage devoted to each crop by the farmers of the region. The 

 averages of the annual yields obtained on the experiment-station 

 plats tend in the main to justify, with one exception, the relative 

 importance assigned to the several crops by the farmers. According 

 to the station figures, corn occupies a higher place in the acreage of 

 the region than it is entitled to by its yield. 



The average yields in bushels per acre for the 15 years since the 

 experiments were started in 1906 are as follows: Winter wheat, 16.1; 

 spring wheat, 5.1; oats, 18.5; barley, 15.8; corn, 5.4; kafir, 14.9; and 

 milo, 15.7. 



The problem of wheat production in this section has been presented 

 concretely and with it the obvious question of what is the experi- 

 ment-station evidence on the possibility of increasing the average 

 yield and increasing it profitably. 



3 The Office of Dry-Land Agriculture Investigations was organized in 1906 with E. C. Chilcott as Agri- 

 culturist in Charge, who planned, outlined, and instituted these investigations and who still has general 

 supervision of them . This bulletin has been prepared under his direction . 



L. E. Hazen had immediate charge of the cooperative work in 1906, 1907, and 190S. Since 1909 it has 

 been under the immediate charge of the junior writer. 



The work is closely coordinated v.ith that at 23 other stations on the Great Plains, and the conclusions 

 are therefore presented with a greater degree of confidence than they would be were they based entirely 

 upon the results of the single station. 



