American Agriculturist 
THE FARM PAPER THAT PRINTS ,THE , FARM NEWS 
“Agriculture is the Most Healthful, Most Useful and Most Noble Employment of Man.”— Washington 
Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. Established 1842 
Volume 114 For the Week Ending November 1, 1924 Number 18 
A Bird’s-Eye View 
An Autumn Glance sit the Greatest Business in the Greatest Country 
By A. B. GENUNG 
United States Department of Agriculture 
T HIS is a big country. What a marvelous 
panorama, could one but get into an 
airplane and go high enough to view it all. 
The hill country of the East, studded 
with cities set in a pattern of dairying, hay, pota¬ 
toes, fruit, and truck crops that go with the 
urban East. The rolling South with its pine 
forests, its endless fields of cotton, its warm- 
country crops. The magnificent Corn Belt, flat, 
fertile—the Nation’s agricultural heart. Farther 
west, the Wheat Belt—a two-thousand-mile 
strip of plains, irregularly carpeted now with 
pale stubble or the brown of newly planted land. 
Then the vast, sweeping ranges of the Rocky 
Mountain country with its great valleys into which 
whole empires might be 
dropped—itself an empire of 
grazing cattle and sheep. 
And beyond all the Pacific 
Coast, self-contained, di¬ 
verse, boundless in its re¬ 
sources. No agricultural pic¬ 
ture like this, the world over. 
Go into the South this fall 
and you will be impressed 
with its prosperity. Last 
year went a long way to wipe 
out the pressing burden of 
indebtedness. Another cot¬ 
ton crop bringing one and a 
half billion dollars cash, plus 
a fairly good season with 
truck crops, potatoes, rice 
and small fruits will put the 
South into very comfortable 
position. General sentiment 
through the region is dis¬ 
tinctly optimistic. 
In the East, meaning es¬ 
sentially the dairy and di¬ 
versified region, things are not materially different 
from last year. Dairymen are beginning to feel 
the pressure from higher prices of grain feeds. 
Milk prices have stayed at rather discouraging 
levels; butter, however, has held pretty well to a 
price level which maintains production. Through 
the market milk sections there are apparently 
fewer heifer calves than a year ago, indicating a 
probable tendency toward somewhat lighter 
production. The East is in good shape as to feed 
crops, that is hay, silage corn, and oats; and it is 
doing fully as well as last year with the leading 
money crops such as potatoes, apples, etc. Al¬ 
together, the East is going into winter on about 
the same basis as the last two years. The pre¬ 
vailing frame of mind among farmers is rather 
static. Men find little to be enthusiastic about. 
In the Corn Belt, farmers are in better spirits 
than for four years—not so much from any' great 
increase in income as from a feeling that the stage 
is being set for better times. At last the hog 
situation is coming out from under its burden of 
overproduction, which in turn represented an 
effort to work off the corn surplus of 1920-21. 
Corn prices are up and the expectation is that hog 
prices are going to ride at higher levels during the 
coming year. The corn outlook is bad enough. 
Frosts have hit the North before this is written. 
A heavy percentage of corn will certainly be soft 
and one of the Corn Belt’s real farm management 
problems this fall is how best to dispose of the 
soft corn. Notwithstanding the poor corn crop, 
the central States are obviously breathing easier 
than they have along back. 
The Wheat Belt is in infinitely better shape 
than for three years. Yields are splendid, the 
crop of high quality, and prices improved just at 
harvest time. Up in the Western spring wheat 
territory, where nobody has had a new pair of 
shoes since the winter of 1919-20, there is particu¬ 
lar rejoicing. All through the wheat country 
growers have hustled grain to market and new 
money is circulating rapidly in the process of 
paying debts. Men are inclined once more to 
regard the wheat country as good property. 
In the range country the situation is somewhat 
mixed, in that sheep men and growers of grain and 
many irrigated crops are in very fair shape while 
cattle men are just the reverse. Sheep are every¬ 
where in favor and flocks increasing, except in 
certain local areas where drought has cut the feed. 
The cattle situation remains an enigma. It has 
been a four-year story of liquidation, which still 
continues. In spite of which—even of the con¬ 
tinued selling off of breeding stock—there are a 
lot of cattle left in the range country. Old, long¬ 
headed operators are not lacking who believe that 
the industry has hit bottom and that this is the 
time to begin stocking up, and they are doing so 
to the tune of thousands of head. So far as this 
year’s income goes, however, it may be tersely 
said that sheep have made money and cattle have 
lost money. The ranges are in good shape and 
winter feed abundant, generally speaking, every¬ 
where east of the continental divide. 
The Pacific Coast has been seriously hurt by 
drought and to a lesser degree by frosts and the 
foot-and-mouth disease. Feed is short and the 
livestock situation is certainly no more favorable 
than last year. Grain yields did turn out better 
than were expected earlier in the season and of 
course the higher prices have cheered such growers. 
Many of the deciduous fruits have suffered in 
yield and quality from the drought. However, the 
coast, taken altogether, produces a tremendous 
diversity of things and it will never be without an 
income. It may not be wide of the mark to say 
that the coast country is in just fair condition this 
fall but, on the whole, does not seem in quite as 
good shape as one year ago. 
If one is inclined to think in terms of five years 
or ten, say, there are several interesting things in 
view over the country. _ ' 
For one thing there are more people. That is 
the most significant of all economic developments. 
We have 9 or 10 million more people in American 
towns than five years ago. The increased popu¬ 
lation is in the towns, not in the open country. 
It is directly evident in the numbers of people in 
city streets. It is further 
evident in the expanded resi¬ 
dential fringe about the cities. 
East, West, North and South, 
the towns have mushroomed 
out into new suburban dis¬ 
tricts. A tremendous expan¬ 
sion in small homes espe¬ 
cially—probably greater than 
will take place again in a 
generation. This latter a 
contrast, too, with the open 
country; the last five years 
have put no new buildings 
of any kind on the farms, 
least of all houses. 
The next most outstanding 
development over the coun¬ 
try is the automobile. The 
road horses of ten years ago 
—and for that matter a 
thousand years ago—have 
been replaced. We hardly 
appreciate yet how profound¬ 
ly this shift has affected 
American farm life. Still less do we appreciate 
how it has contributed to efficiency in agricultural 
production. The time necessarily spent between 
farm and town has always been one of the biggest 
factors of overhead in agricultural production. 
The automobile has cut down this item of over¬ 
head as effectively as the binder cut down the 
direct labor in grain harvest. No thoughtful 
person can look over this country to-day without 
being impressed by the automobile’s part in 
farming. 
Coincident is the amazing program of road¬ 
building. That, however, is a project in the 
making. 
There is a little new farm machinery in the 
fields this fall; not much, but occasionally a new 
sulky plow or perhaps a harrow or a wagon or a 
binder, etc. Here and there one sees a new tractor. 
There is occasionally a new stretch of fencing to 
be seen also. All of which represents a start to¬ 
ward replenishment of the productive farm plant, 
a matter which begins to be urgent. 
Apparently more land has been put back into 
sod, taking the country as a whole. Seemingly, 
also, there is quite a bit more leguminous sod; 
alfalfa and the clovers in particular. This in line 
with the more conservative policy thrust upon 
farmers by the deflation period. It is part of the 
slow upbuilding, once more, of reserves. 
One noticeable trend among types'of farming 
(Continued on page 306) 
“This is a big country”—from the dairy lands of the East “to the Pacific Coast, self-contained, diverse, 
boundless in its resources.” 
