894 
Iht  RURAL  NEW-YORKER 
June  SO,  1923 
How  Much  Will  Europe  Buy  From  America? 
Perhaps  Less  Grain  and  Meat.  Needs  Our  Cotton.  Year’s  Outlook 
Fair.  Long,  Range  Doubtful.  What  Can  Be  Done?  Some 
Home  Market  Products 
r-"  ^qiAST  CONDITIONS. — The  foreign  demand 
Z/pfTft  for  our  farm  products  is  like  the  outlet  of 
a  wet  swale  lot.  It  keeps  the  current  mov- 
iug  and  prevents  stagnation.  What  liap- 
%  I  I,ene(l  *n  1^21  was  partly  the  clogging  of 
this  outlet,  and  there  was  no  relief  until 
much  lower  prices  cleared  the  way.  If  farmers 
could  have  known  what  was  coming,  perhaps  they 
would  not  have  raised  quite  so  much  grain,  meat 
and  other  products  in  1920.  A  farmer  who  knows 
the  outlook  now  in  a  general  way  should  he  able  to 
plan  better  than  by  taking  no  thought  on  the  sub¬ 
ject.  Let  us  take  up  one  export  line  after  another 
and  see  what  it  means  in  the  situation. 
THE  THREE  LEADING  ITEMS.— The  main  farm 
items  in  the  foreign  demand  are  grain,  pork  pro¬ 
ducts  and  cotton.  It  may  not  be  known  generally 
that  pork,  bacon,  ham  and  lard  exports  largely  ex¬ 
ceed  any  other  food  export  items.  Exports  of  beef, 
dairy  and  poultry  products  and  fruits  are  less  prom¬ 
inent  than  the  three  groups  that  have  been  men¬ 
tioned.  but  very  important  to  some  of  our  farmers. 
GRAIN. — Our  exports  of  wheat  were  194,000,000 
bushels  in  19ir>.  470.000.000  in  1921.  and  425,000,000 
in  1922 ;  still  it  was  twice  as  much  as  before  the 
war.  Europe  is  the  great  customer  for  our  farm 
products,  although  the  trade  with  South  America 
is  promising  because  of  its  rapid  gains  and  the 
increase  of  population,  which  has  doubled  in  the 
past  20  years.  They  are  taking  a  great  deal  of 
American  and  Canadian  wheat  now,  and  the  trade 
to  the  south  of  us  may  develop  greatly  in  time.  At 
present  Europe  is  our  main  dependence.  The  mar¬ 
ket  in  Europe  will  depend  more  on  the  buying  power 
than  on  any  increase  in  production  over  there.  The 
come-back  of  Russia  and  other  former  grain  export¬ 
ing  countries  of  Eastern  Europe  is  very  slow.  Gov¬ 
ernment  observers  just  back  from  those  countries 
say  the  old  estates  are  broken  up,  the  farming  sys¬ 
tem  going  backward  instead  of  forward,  and  no 
great  wheat  export  surplus  is  to  be  expected  for 
many  years.  They  are  coming  back  in  rye  and  bar¬ 
ley.  but  not  on  wheat.  Europe  will  have  to  buy  of 
outside  countries.  The  United  States  will  share  this 
trade  with  South  America,  Australia,  India  and  a 
few  other  countries.  These  grain-shipping  countries 
are  raising  rather  more  than  last  season,  so  that  the 
competition  will  be  more  keen.  How  much  Europe 
can  buy  will  depend  on  how  much  money  she  takes 
in.  It  is  a  question  whether  Europe  may  not  feel 
too  poor  the  coming  year  to  buy  all  the  wheat  she 
wants.  Her  people  may  have  to  eat  more  of  the  old 
black  rye  bread.  We  conclude  that  the  outlook  for 
wheat  from  this  country,  while  fair,  is  not  so  good 
as  for  recent  years. 
TOO  MUCH  PORK.— The  world  has  taken  to 
raising  more  pigs.  Feed  was  cheap  and  in  many 
countries  of  Europe  grain  prices  were  fixed  by  law  at 
a  low  price.  Farmers  everywhere  turned  grain  into 
quick  money  by  raising  pigs.  The  outlook  is  not 
good  at  present  for  our  pork  and  lard  trade,  and  for 
the  same  reason  there  may  be  too  many  cattle  in  a 
year  or  two. 
WORLD  NEEDS  ALL  OUR  COTTON— The  out¬ 
look  is  better  for  cotton  than  for  the  other  main¬ 
stays  of  our  export  trade.  The  world’s  supply  is 
unusually  light,  especially  so  of  the  American  cot¬ 
ton  which  must  be  used  for  many  leading  classes  of 
manufactured  goods.  The  crop  in  this  country  is 
the  main  reliance,  and  Europe  must  somehow  find 
money  to  pay  for  it.  The  prospect  is  that  the  de¬ 
mand  will  exceed  the  supply,  and  the  price  will 
continue  rather  high.  The  South  is  raising  more 
cotton,  but  not  enough  more  to  fill  the  probable 
shortage.  The  weak  spot  is  the  uncertainty  of  busi¬ 
ness  conditions  here  and  in  Europe.  Some  cotton 
mills  are  shutting  down  in  this  country. 
GENERAL  OUTLOOK  FAIR. — The  foreign  de¬ 
mand  for  American  apples  varies  with  the  crop  over 
there,  and  no  crop  news  has  come  through  yet. 
Probably  the  demand  will  be  fair  in  proportion  to 
the  smaller  crops  expected  in  this  country  the  pres¬ 
ent  season.  The  foreign  demand  for  our  poultry  and 
dairy  products  is  not  likely  to  vary  enough  to  affect 
the  general  situation  here.  On  the  whole,  the  out¬ 
look  for  our  foreign  trade  in  farm  products  is  not 
so  good  as  last  year,  but  still  fair,  as  compared  with 
times  before  the  war.  Taking  a  long  range  outlook, 
one  would  say  that  the  chances  are  better  for  pro¬ 
ducts  that  depend  mostly  on  our  own  markets; 
such  items  as  fruits,  vegetables,  milk,  eggs  and  hay. 
STRESS  THE  HOME  MARKET  — If  some  of  our 
farmers  rightly  located  would  place  more  and  more 
stress  on  these  crops  and  less  on  grain  and  meat 
products,  they  might  do  better,  according  to  the  way 
things  look  just  now.  The  prospects  would  improve 
if  the  various  muddles  of  the  Old  World  countries 
were  cleared  up,  but  that  must  be  left  to  the  states¬ 
men.  We  could  lend  Europe  more  money  to  buy  our 
goods,  but  it  is  risky  to  lend  to  people  already  deep 
This  picture  is  sent  by  Mr.  R.  H.  Kiddle  of  Ohio,  who 
tells  us  about  his  tame  gander :  “This  bird  was 
hatched  by  an  old  hen  ;  when  he  was  but  two  days  old 
his  mother  turned  up  her  toes,  so  it  was  up  to  someone 
to  look  after  this  little  chap.  It  was  but  a  few  days 
and  he  knew  who  looked  after  him.  I  named  him  Reap 
because  this  was  all  he  could  say  ;  however,  he  responds 
to  his  name.  This  gander  will  follow  me  any  place  I 
go ;  in  fact,  if  I  do  not  want  him  to  go  he  must  be 
locked  in.  He  will  stand  on  my  hands,  shoulders,  or 
head ;  it  does  not  appear  to  make  any  difference.  In 
the  picture  he  simply  crawled  up  my  side  and  stood  still 
while  getting  his  picture.  lie  will  be  a  year  old  the  lat¬ 
ter  part  of  this  June.  Strange  to  say,  this  bird,  if  out 
of  our  yard,  will  come  at  once  when  called  by  his  name.” 
in  debt,  and  some  of  them  inclined  to  dodge  payment. 
If  Europe  buys  less  of  some  things  from  us,  we  will 
need  to  raise  less  of  such  things,  and  from  that 
point  of  view  the  recent  flow  of  farmers  and  farm 
help  from  country  to  city  may  help  to  balance  the 
situation.  g.  b.  f. 
A  Disease  of  “Live-forever’  * 
SOMETHING  over  25  years  ago  we  had  a  letter 
from  a  New  York  farmer  with  regard  to  a  dis¬ 
ease  which  he  claimed  would  kill  the  plant  com¬ 
monly  known  as  “live-forever.”  This  plant  had  be¬ 
come  a  weed  pest  on  many  New  York  farms,  and  it 
was  well  named,  for  it  continued  to  live  in  spite  of 
thorough  cultivation.  This  farmer  claimed  to  have 
found  a  diseased  plant,  and  that  he  had  communi¬ 
cated  the  disease  to  other  plants.  By  using  them 
here  and  there  in  a  field,  he  had  been  able  to  spread 
the  disease  and  exterminate  the  pest.  He  was  very 
insistent  in  saying  that  in  this  way  he  could  cer¬ 
tainly  clean  any  farm  of  live-forever.  We  succeeded 
in  interesting  Prof.  I.  P.  Roberts,  who  was  then 
Dean  of  the  College  of  Agriculture  at  Cornell,  and 
finally  Prof.  Stone  of  the  college  made  some  prac¬ 
tical  experiments  with  the  diseased  plants.  It  now 
seems  that  Prof.  Stone  introduced  these  plants  into 
a  field  badly  infested  with  live-forever,  and  then, 
busy  with  many  matters,  he  forgot  all  about  it  until 
some  years  later.  Then,  when  he  made  an  investiga¬ 
tion.  he  found  that  the  live-forever  was  no  longer 
troublesome.  It  had  really  been  killed  out  for  the 
most  part.  Little  has  been  done  with  this  work 
since  then.  Prof.  Barrus  of  the  Department  of 
Plant  Pathology  tells  us  that,  a  few  years  ago,  he 
saw  this  field,  and  started  to  make  a  study  of  the 
diseased  plants  to  find  some  practical  way  for  utiliz¬ 
ing  them,  either  by  introducing  the  affected  plants, 
or  by  means  of  cultures  of  the  organism.  There 
were  so  many  other  problems  arising  at  the  time 
that  this  matter  was  not  taken  up.  The  field  where 
the  disease  occurred  has  been  plowed  up  several 
times  since  that  date,  and  it  is  practically  impossible 
to  locate  any  plants  there,  either  healthy  ones  or 
those  which  a^re  suffering  from  the  disease.  We  are 
still  receiving  letters  about  this  matter.  Evidently 
some  of  our  readers  are  still  troubled  with  live- 
forever.  and  they  want  to  know  how  to  get  rid  of  it. 
Wo  think  there  would  be  some  little  demand  for  the 
diseased  plants  if  they  could  be  easily  obtained.  So 
far  as  the  evidence  goes,  the  disease  does  actually 
clean  up  the  live-forever.  We  write  this  in  the  hope 
that  some  of  our  readers  may  know  where  the  dis¬ 
eased  plants  can  be  obtained.  We  believe  there  are 
still  some  of  them  to  be  found  on  New  York  farms, 
and  it  is  quite  likely  that  if  they  can  be  definitely 
located  something  can  be  done  in  making  use  of 
them  to  clean  out  this  pest. 
Buttermilk  Used  in  the  Silo 
HAVING  read  something  in  your  paper  about 
the  advantages  of  introducing  Bulgarian  lactic 
acid  bacilli  into  silage  for  preserving  it  from  molds, 
I  decided  I  would  try  adding  buttermilk  to  mine  last 
Fall.  My  farming  consists  of  trying  to  establish  a 
fruit  farm  of  apples  and  peaches  on  new  ground, 
where  we  must  cultivate  throughout  the  entire  sea¬ 
son  to  keep  down  sprouts,  so  I  had  Soy  beans  plant¬ 
ed  in  the  tree  rows  and  on  each  side,  and  then  in 
the  corn  hills  in  the  rows  between,  so  that  there 
was  a  larger  amount  of  Soy  beans  than  the  propor¬ 
tions  advised  to  make  a  balanced  ration.  Those 
who  had  used  Soy  beans  around  here  told  me  such 
a  large  mass  of  them  would  surely  spoil  in  the  silo, 
as  no  one  had  successfully  made  silage  and  used 
almost  any  beans. 
I  had  filled  part  of  the  silo  when  I  succeeded  in 
getting  some  buttermilk,  and  then  I  spi'inkled  about 
2y>  gallons  of  a  mixture  of  water  and  buttermilk 
over  each  two-horse  wagonload,  and  filled  up  the 
S-ft.  silo,  then  began  on  the  G-ft  .silo,  but  the  cream¬ 
ery  did  not  send  out  more  buttermilk,  as  I  ordered, 
and  the  men,  knowing  it  was  an  experiment,  went  on 
with  the  filling  without  it.# 
In  all  parts  where  the  milk  was  used  there  was 
almost  no  - mold — at  the  doors  that  did  not  fit  was 
some — and  in  other  parts  there  were  large  chunks 
where  the  beans  were  massed.  We  used  a  half-and- 
half  mixture,  but  I  wonder  if  less  milk  would  do  as 
well.  Several  old  users  of  silage  saw  it ;  one  sales¬ 
man  of  silos  for  20  years,  and  he  admitted  he  never 
saw  as  bright  leaves,  down  in  the  cemented  por¬ 
tion  in  the  ground  also,  where  he  had  told  me  silage 
would  not  be  as  good  as  in  the  wood.  One  of  my 
silos  is  below  the  surface  20  ft.,  and  I  use  it  for  a 
cistern  in  Summer.  It  is  in  red  clay  and  plastered 
with  about  an  inch  of  concrete  plaster.  On  it  sets 
a  20-ft.  tub.  H.  S  BECKLER. 
Virginia. 
R.  N.-Y. — Last  year  we  told  of  using  soured  skim- 
milk  for  inoculating  the  silo.  There  is  a  regular 
commercial  culture  for  this  use.  We  believe  that 
the  theory  of  using  this  inoeulent  is  sound,  and  that 
when  the  right  conditions  are  given  the  silage  will 
be  improved. 
