WINTER-WHEAT PRODUCTION AT FORT HAYS STATION. < 
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 
almost 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 wheat. 
Other crops, presented in the order of the number of plats occu- 
pied by each, are kafir, corn, oats, barley, spring wheat, milo, alfalfa, 
brome-grass, sorghum, field peas, and winterrye. 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 ofthem. This bulletin has been prepared under his direction. 
L. E. Hazen had immediate charge of the cooperative work in 1906, 1907,and 1908. Since 1909 it has 
been under the immediate charge of the junior writer. 
The work is closely coordinated with 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. 
