Agricultural Products Shipped Into Colorado 15 
is now used in Colorado, for as soon as the trade was established, the 
Utah shippers began sending seed badly adulterated with sweet clover. 
Some of the highest priced shipments contained 90% of sweet clover 
Some Colorado dealers, after being forced to abandon the Utah 
seed on account of the sweet clover adulteration, decided to secure 
seed grown in Arizona; and considerable Arizona alfalfa seed is now 
on sale in Colorado. 
The few tests made of Arizona seed by the Colorado Experiment 
Station have shown that the plants from it are too delicate for our 
climate, and begin to ret and die within a year after seeding. Whether 
this will be true of all alfalfa from Arizona seed we do not know. 
Alfalfa seeding in Colorado from seed grown in the western sec¬ 
tions of Nebraska and Kansas have shown that seed from these sec¬ 
tions is very desirable. 
Probably less than half of the alfalfa seed sown annually in Colo¬ 
rado is grown in the state. There is a great opportunity for the de¬ 
velopment of this industry, as Colorado farmers prefer home grown 
seed, and if it could be produced there would be great demand for 
Colorado alfalfa seed in the northern section of the corn belt as well 
as at home. 
Seed Potatoes .—At least 50 cars of seed potatoes are shipped 
each year into the Greeley district from outside the state, costing 
wholesale, $20,000. Other parts of Colorado ship in from other states 
seed potatoes, costing at a low estimate, $10,000, a total of $30,000 per 
year for seed potatoes shipped into Colorado. Some years nearly twice 
this amount has been shipped into the Greeley district alone. This 
seed comes chiefly from Wisconsin, some from Minnesota, and a few 
cars from Maine. 
C. L. Fitch, of the Colorado Experiment Station, has made a 
careful investigation of the results obtained from this ‘‘shipped in” 
seed. He reports that the average returns in the crop from the seed 
shipped in is $40 an acre less than that from acclimated seedt The 
seed shipped into the state is sufficient to plant 4,100 acres, which at 
$40 an acre, makes a direct loss in the crop each year of at least 
$164,000. Sometimes double this acreage is planted with seed shipped 
into Colorado, and the loss is then double the amount given. 
On the other hand, for the past two years carefully selected seed 
potatoes from Greeley sent to the San Luis Valley have produced an 
average gain in profits of $75 an acre over home grown seed. 
About 30,000 acres are planted to potatoes each year in the 
Greeley district, and the acreage is constantly increasing. If seed 
could be secured for this district that would give as great an increase 
in profits an acre as the Greeley seed gives in the San Luis Valley, the 
additional profits would be enormous. 
One of the most promising lines for the potato grower at an 
altitude of 7,000 feet is the production of seed potatoes grown from 
seed taken from high yielding hills. When the right seed is develop¬ 
ed northern Colorado alone needs 800 cars a year. 
