— 121 — 



seven or eight years old that are not four inches through. The gentle- 

 man who says he raises peaches on wheat land without irrigation has 

 exceptional fruit land. He has got water close by. But take the fruit 

 from Sacramento to Lodi and you will find that my statement is correct. 



AMERICAN POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Mr. Lelong read a telegram from G. C. Brackett, of Kansas City, 

 stating that the Pomological Society would meet at Sacramento. 



WHEAT AND FRUIT GROWING IN CALIFORNIA. 



By Gen. N. P. Chipman, of Red Bluff. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: For the third time I have been 

 asked by the State Board of Horticulture to submit some observations 

 upon the relative importance of wheat and fruit in the agriculture of 

 California. 



Six years ago, at your annual meeting in Chico, I ventured to warn 

 the farmers of this State against the persistent planting of wheat as the 

 chief agricultural product of California, and to invite them to consider 

 the importance of fruit growing; or, if they had no faith in fruit, then 

 to adopt a system of diversifying their crops so as to avoid what seemed 

 to me the early collapse of grain farming as a source of profit. 



Again at San Jose, in 1892, I still further elaborated the argument, 

 having in the meantime gathered the statistics and experience of the 

 succeeding four years. What had been conjecture and prophecy in 1888 

 took on the form of actuality in 1892, and now in 1894 no man seems 

 able to forecast the doom of wheat as a product of the farm. 



The price has been steadily declining since 1886, and rapidly since 

 1890, until wheat sold in Liverpool in October at a figure lower than it 

 has been known for two hundred years. 



In 1888 I assumed that there was debatable ground for wheat, and 

 my purpose was not so much to discourage its growth as to point out 

 to reluctant farmers the future of fruit growing in this State, and 

 encourage the breaking up of the great grain ranches and the planting 

 of more fruit trees. As far as California is concerned, the action enti- 

 tled "Wheat versus Fruit" has been tried, and has been won by the 

 defendant. An appeal has been taken, and the judgment has been 

 affirmed and a rehearing denied. The question is res adjudicata. 



The question is no longer whether we should plant wheat or fruit. 

 The question is, What shall the wheat grower do to be saved? 



When we took up the gage of battle the wheat grower told us that if 

 we would keep on planting trees we would soon be feeding our fruits to 

 the swine. It looks now as if the prediction as to fruit is to recoil on 

 wheat, and that wheat, and not fruit, is to go to help supply our meat 

 market. 



I do not see how I can greatly strengthen the argument addressed to 

 you on former occasions. A review convinces me that the reasons 

 advanced for the planting of less wheat in California for foreign mar- 

 kets still hold good, and have been greatly emphasized in the past two 

 years. 



