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Within one half mile from where we now are is a two hundred acre field, 

 being a part of the noble Rancho Chico. This field has been cropped to 

 wheat for over thirty years. The land is of the richest and finest quality. 

 General Bidwell has assured me that in early days it produced seventy 

 bushels to the acre. The yield now rarely exceeds twenty-five. 



Addressing gentlemen familiar with the law governing successive crop- 

 pings of the soil to one kind of grain, I need spend no further time on this 

 proposition. 



In this State we mitigate somewhat the operation of this law by our sys- 

 tem of summer fallowing, but this only prolongs the fertility of the soil; 

 it does not restore it. The rapid exhaustion is somewhat arrested, but 

 exhaustion goes on in less ratio. 



So intelligent a wheat grower as Judge 0. C. Pratt, I am told, claims that 

 land not far south of Chico, grown to wheat on the summer fallow principle, 

 shows no falling off in yield. I cannot dispute his observations. It may 

 be that the occasional overflow from the Sacramento River and Butte Creek 

 gives back to the soil the fertilizing properties exhausted by the process of 

 wheat growth, as I think is the fact as to other lands around Durham and 

 Biggs, of which the same claim is made of constant and undiminished fer- 

 tility. 



Of one thing, however, we may feel assured, that an inflexible law of 

 nature is not to be ignored. The soil cannot be made to give up its prop- 

 erties without exhaustion, unless we return in some form an equivalent. 



The census of 1880 showed that California had one million eight hun- 

 dred and thirty-two thousand four hundred and twenty-nine acres in wheat, 

 yielding twenty-nine million seventeen thousand seven hundred and seven 

 bushels — an average of fifteen and eighty-three one hundredths bushels per 

 acre. 



The Agricultural Department at Washington reported February, 1888, 

 that in 1887 California had two million seven hundred and sixty-six thou- 

 sand two hundred and thirty-five acres in wheat, yielding thirty million 

 four hundred and twenty-nine thousand bushels — an average of a trifle 

 over eleven bushels per acre. The average per acre in 1886 was eleven and 

 one third. This shows a falling off in the average of four and one half 

 bushels per acre, or a little over 28 per cent in eighteen years. It is a 

 rather significant fact that our average has fallen off much more than the 

 average for the whole United States. 



The annual average for the United States from 1870 to 1880 was twelve 

 and four tenths bushels, and from 1880 to 1887 twelve and one tenth bushels, 

 being a falling off of only about three tenths of a bushel. This, I think, 

 must be due to the greater proportion of new wheat lands being opened up 

 elsewhere than in California, and to the fact that crops are changed to other 

 cereals in other wheat States. 



The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable, that constant wheat cropping 

 in California of the same lands is gradually reducing fertility and should 

 cease, except in favored regions, and should be intermitted by planting of 

 other crops in all cases, or the land reinforced by artificial fertilization. 



Following in line with impoverishment of the soil comes falling off in 

 average price paid for wheat. 



The Agricultural Department at Washington in report of 1888 gives a 

 table of twelve wheat States, not including California, which shows the 

 average price of wheat from 1875 to 1887 to have gone from $1 per bushel 

 to 68 cents, farm value. 



This farm value varies more than would be supposed. In Kentucky in 

 1875 it was $1 05; same year in Nebraska, 64 k cents; in Michigan it was 

 $1 15; in Iowa, 71 cents. 



