340 
The  RURAL  NEW-YORKER 
March  3,  1923 
HOPE  FARM  NOTES 
Looking  to  the  Future 
Part  I. 
Those  of  us  who  live  on  the  upper  Atlan¬ 
tic  slope  are  naturally  interested  in  the 
food  production  of  the  future.  A  nation, 
like  an  army,  must  travel  on  its  stomach. 
Food,  rather  than  power  or  skill,  will  de¬ 
termine  the  future  of  an  individual  or  an 
industry.  While  it  may  be  a  clear  moral 
law  that  man  shall  not  live  by  bread 
alone,  it  is  a  fixed  physical  law  that  he 
cannot  live  without  bread — which  word 
means  in  a  general  way  human  food.  This 
long,  ice-bound  Winter  has  made  us  all 
thoughtful,  and  many  are  deeply  concern¬ 
ed  over  the  future.  It  seems  at  times  al¬ 
most  as  if  the  good  old  earth  had  lost  her 
power  to  nourish  and  sustain  us— during 
her  long  sleep  down  under  the  snow.  She 
is  only  sleeping,  however,  and  when  Spring 
finally  comes  we  shall  see  her  face  once 
more  fresher  and  brighter  for  her  long 
rest.  But  with  all  these  mighty  changes 
which  are  sweeping  through  the  world, 
blowing  down  the  old  defenses  and  blow- 
ing  out  the  old  ideas  and  prejudices,  what 
is  coming  to  the  farmer  on  the  upper  At¬ 
lantic  slope?  It  will  be  understood  tbat 
by  that  section  I  mean  that  part  of  the 
country  from  Maryland  to  Maine,  where 
the  rivers  run  down  hill  to  the  Atlantic 
Ocean.  This  is  the  oldest  part  of  our 
country,  the  most  dramatic  in^our  history 
and  the  most  changeable  inTts  industry. 
What  is  now  coming  to  the  farmer  and 
fruit  grower? 
if  St  #  »  $ 
I  do  not  pose  as  a  prophet,  but  judging 
from  the  past  I  think  certain  things  are 
quite  sure  to  happen.  Evidently  we  must 
seek  new  crops  and  products.  The  im¬ 
mense  development  of  transportation  has 
enabled  all  points  and  corners  of  the 
world  to  'pour  food  or  other  farm  products 
into  our  territory.  South  Africa  and  Aus¬ 
tralia  can  send  us  certain  things  cheaper 
than  we  can  produce  them.  There  might 
come  a  mild  Winter  without  solid  freez¬ 
ing,  which  would  enable  Greenland  and 
Labrador  to  ship  ice  into  New  Jersey  at 
a  profit.  Or  it  is  even  possible  that  a 
big  airship  could  take  tanks  of  water  four 
or  five  miles  up  into  the  air  and  bring 
them  back  as  solid  ice.  This  section  must 
in  the  future  find  the  crops  or  products 
which  are  best  suited  to  our  soils  and  mar¬ 
kets,  and  our  people  must  handle  them 
and  let  other  sections  produce  the  things 
with  which  we  cannot  compete.  The  ex¬ 
periment  stations  and  colleges  can  help 
in  this,  but  they  feel  that  they  must  be 
sure,  and  that  means  slow.  1  think  farm¬ 
ers  will  have  to  do  it  themselves  to  a  large 
extent.  For  example,  I  think  at  least  500 
farmers  in  Southern  New  Jersey  should 
plant  small  areas  of  some  early  variety 
of  cotton  this  year,  give  it  good  care  and 
watch  its  growth  I  shall  be  laughed  at 
for  suggesting  cotton  for  South  Jersey, 
but  that  never  hurt  me  any.  I  think 
laughter  is  the  oil  of  life.  It  is  evident 
that  cotton  was  grown  in  the  southern 
part  of  this  State  at  the  time  of  the  Rev- 
olutiou.  With  the  newer  and  earlier  va¬ 
rieties  I  think  it  can  bo  done  today,  and 
provide  a  crop  which  will  relieve  the 
pressure  on  some  others.  Whatever  the 
crops  we  find  best  in  the  future,  we  have 
evidently  got  to  learn  how  to  get  together 
so  as  to  regulate  or  reduce  production 
and  not  overstock  the  markets  with  per¬ 
ishable  goods.  In  the  days  of  Pharaoh 
Joseph  stored  the  grain  of  the  fat  years, 
but  he  could  not  store  the  fruits  and 
melons  and  vegetables  which  the  Egypt¬ 
ians  raised  in  great  quantities.  There  were 
no  canning  factories  in  those  days.  We 
all  know  that  w  hen  there  is  a  “glut”  of 
fruits  and  vegetables  no  one  is  partic- 
larly  benefited.  The  farmer  gets  nothing 
and  the  consumer  is  not  greatly  helped, 
for  trainloads  of  these  perishables  have 
been  dumped  out  to  spoil  rather  than  put 
them  on  the  market  so  as  to  reduce  the 
retail  price.  In  the  future  we  have  all 
got  to  learn  how  to  regulate  the  size  of 
the  crop.  No  government  can  do  this  for 
us — it  will  be  worked  out  through  the 
loyalty  and  plain  sense  of  the  individual 
It  is  evident  that  as  time  goes  on  the 
pests  of  insects  and  diseases  which  affect 
our  crops  will  increase.  We  shall  be 
driven  from  time  to  time  to  clean  ground 
or  we  must  learn  how  to  sterilize  our  soil 
on  a  large  scale  and  fight  those  pests 
successfully.  I  think  new  vai-ieties  will 
be  worked  out  more  or  less  immune  to 
disease  and  insects.  It  is  something  like 
30  years  ago  that  Mr.  Carman  brought 
out  his  new  R.  N.-Y.  No.  2  potato.  It  is 
known  everywhere  as  “Rural.”  It  had'  a 
peculiar  upright  stem  and  tough,  leathery 
foliage,  and  actually  stood  off  blight  and 
bugs  better  than  most  varieties.  As  one 
man  put  it  in  these  early  days,  “a  potato 
bug  is  like  a  man — he  cannot  eat  gristle 
as  fast  as  he  can  porterhouse  steak.” 
From  that  starting  thei-e  have  been  de¬ 
veloped  many  varieties  of  fruits  and  veg¬ 
etables  which  ai-e  more  or  less  immune. 
The  Ben  Davis  apple  and  the  Kieffer  pear 
are  examples.  I  think  there  will  be  more 
of  them.  I  also  think  thex-e  will  be  dis¬ 
covered  some  combination  of  sulphur  and 
other  chemicals  which  may  enter  the 
plant  through  its  growth  and  partly  over¬ 
come  the  effects  of  plant  disease.  I  am 
aware  that  the  scientists  will  say  this  is 
improbable,  if  not  impossible,  yet  I  will 
stick  to  my  belief.  I  think  dusting  is  to 
take  the  place  of  most  spraying  in  lighting 
leaf-eating  insects  and  plant  diseases. 
There  will  be  new  combinations  of  dust 
which  are  likely  to  prove  effective  against 
most  insects,  except  the  scales.  I  think 
a  liquid  spray  will  be  needed  to  kill  them, 
and  without  doubt  they  are  coming  back 
fiercer  than  ever  before.  Five  years  ago 
I  spoke  of  using  airships  to  distribute 
dust  or  spray  on  large  orchards.  There 
was  a  general  laughing,  but  that  very 
thing  is  now  being  done.  In  the  future  I 
think  poison  gas  will  be  used  to  kill  many 
of  our  insects.  For  example,  we  may  take 
a  valley  in  which  potatoes  or  cotton  are 
grown.  I  think  the  scientists  will  at 
last  find  a  way  of  distributing  the  gae 
safely,  so  as  to  destroy  the  potato  bug  or 
weevils  without  damage  to  humans.  I 
also  think  certain  forms  of  gas  will  be 
used  to  fight  plant  diseases  on  a  large 
scale.  As  the  electric  current  becomes 
cheaper  and  more  available,  I  think  it 
will  be  used  on  trees  to  kill  scale  insects 
and  others,  or  it  is  not  impossible,  in  my 
opinion,  that  strong  X-rays  or  heat  waves 
will  be  used  in  insect  killing.  I  would 
not  feel  so  confident  of  all  this  if  I  could 
not  remember  the  time  when  no  one 
thought  of  using  the  simplest  form  of 
poisons  for  killing  potato  bugs  or  codling 
moth.  We  picked  the  bugs  by  hand  and 
turned  sheep  into  the  orchards.  Having 
traveled  so  far  along  the  road  from  that, 
we  shall  not  stop  now.  Some  years  ago 
I  felt  quite  sure  that  parasites  would  be 
more  largely  used  for  killing  insects. 
This  idea  of  “fighting  bug  with  bug” 
seemed  plausible,  but  it  does  not  seem  to 
gain  rapidly.  There  is  mox-e  hope  in  find¬ 
ing  the  “host  plants”  on  which  insects 
spend  a.  part  of  their  life,  and  destroying 
such  plants.  For  example,  it  is  said  that 
the  aphids  which  work  havoc  with  potato 
vines  spend  part  of  their  lives  on  rose 
bushes. 
*  *  *  !jt  * 
We  are  also  to  make  greater  use  of 
water  in  the  future.  Where  I  live  most 
of  the  spring  and  bi-ook  water  will  be 
needed  by  the  swarming  millions  who  will 
group  around  the  mouth  of  the  Hudson. 
Too  much  of  our  snow  and  rain  water  is 
wasted.  In  most  cases  our  crops  are 
measured  not  so  much  by  the  manure  or 
fei-tilizer  we  use  as  by  the  wrater  we  can 
supply.  In  the  future  we  shall  tile-drain 
our  valuable  land  and  build  ponds  or  stor¬ 
age  places  for  water,  where  rainfall  and 
melted  snow  will  be  held.  We  shall  imi¬ 
tate  the  Chinese  in  building  ponds  and 
canals  so  that  this  surplus  water  may  be 
held  for  our  use  instead  of  running  idly 
away  to  the  ocean.  We  are  amused  and 
shocked  at  the  stories  of  how  our  anees- 
tors  wasted  or  neglected  farm  manure. 
Our  own  grandchildren  will  feel  much 
the  same  way  about  grandfather  who  let 
this  precious  water  run  away  from  his 
fairn  with  the  soluble  life  of  the  soil,  and 
then  saw  his  crops  burn  up  in  August, 
just  when  they  needed  di’ink !  In  the 
course  of  time  the  Delaware  River  will 
be  a  long  series  of  ponds,  held  back  by 
dams.  The  water  will  be  pumped  out  and 
sent  far  back  to  irrigate  level  tracts  of 
land.  And  there  will  be  rain-making — 
don’t  laugh ;  I  mean  it.  I  know  all  about 
the  absurd  “rainmakers”  of  25  to  30 
years  ago.  They  went  at  it  wrong — now 
we  know  more  about  it. 
A  raindrop  is  composed  of  millions  of 
little  specks  of  water  condensed  around 
a  tiny  speck  of  dust.  In  that  excellent 
new  book,  “The  New  Air  World.”  we  are 
told  that  if  a  raindrop  were  enlarged 
to  the  size  of  the  earth,  the  little  foirns 
of  molecules  of  which  it  is  composed 
would  be  no  larger  than  baseballs — the 
smallest  of  them  about  the  size  of  green 
peas.  The  raindrop  will  not  form  unless 
there  is  this  tiny  mote  of  dust  around 
which  this  moisture  can  group.  When 
enough  of  them  form  to  make  the  drop 
heavier  than  air,  the  combinatioxx  falls  to 
earth — and  we  have  rain.  Now  clouds 
and  fogs  are  composed  of  very  small 
droplets  of  water.  They  carry  moisture 
as  they  float  about — this  moisture  being 
taken  up  from  streams,  ponds,  the  oceans 
or  other  bodies  of  water.  These  tiny 
molecules  of  water  in  the  c-louds  will  not 
fall  as  rain  until  they  are  condensed  and 
grouped  around  the  particle  of  dust  as 
we  have  described.  New  experiments  are 
being  tried  with  fine  dust.  An  airplane 
flies  slowly  through  a  cloud  or  fog,  driv¬ 
ing  out  as  it  goes  a  cloud  of  very  fine, 
electrified  dust,  thus  giving  the  basis 
for  millions  of  raindrops.  From  the  re¬ 
sults  already  obtained  from  this  plan,  I 
believe  we  shall  in  time  be  able  to  pro¬ 
duce  rain  from  clouds  or  fogs  which  con¬ 
tain  enough  moisture.  The  outcome  of 
such  a. thing  in  its  effect  upon  farming,  as 
well  as  the  change  in  climate  it  may 
bring  about  is  too  large  for  the  ordinary 
human  mind  to  reason  out.  I  think 
something  of  it  will  come. 
*  *  #  if  if 
The  question  of  feeding  our  future  crops' 
is,  I  think,  to  be  partly  solved  by  provid¬ 
ing  more  uniform  supply  of  moisture.  We 
shall  make  the  soil  partly  feed  itself  out 
of  the  air.  There  is  an  old  verse  which 
applies  to  men : 
“Take  this  thought  with  your  dinner ; 
’Twill  give  you  added  zest; 
It  isn’t  what  you  gobble  down ; 
It’s  what  you  can  digest!” 
We  are  going  to  learn  how  to  make  the 
soil  digest  its  food  to  better  advantage. 
I  think  the  manure  supply  on  the  upper 
Atlantic  coast  will  grow  smaller  in  pro 
portion  to  its  need.  There  will  be  fewer 
horses,  and  I  think  the  plan  of  dairying 
is  to  be  changed  so  that  only  the  milkers 
“I  have  a  200-gallon  tank  sprayer  purchased 
from  you  in  1910,  and  I  want  to  say  its  per¬ 
formance  has  been  of  the  highest.  1  have 
sprayed  150  acres  besides  my  own  with  it, 
and  have  used  the  engine  for  sawing  wood 
and  grinding  cider.  The  outfit,  just  seems  to 
‘refuse  to  wear  out.’  But  I  think  it  is  about 
time  it  should  have  its  well  earned  pension.” 
HOWARD  W.  BOWERS, 
The  Bowers  Orchards, 
1-16-23.  Manzanola,  Col. 
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