CHAPTER V
WHERE TO LOCATE
Unless the young farmer expects to return to the ancestral home, the first question he must settle is where he is going to locate. Indeed, one of the most common questions asked is, What do you think of this state or that state or this region or that as a place to farm? There are few questions harder to answer. This is due, among other reasons, to the fact that every place has its advantages and disadvantages. The sum of the advantages may be greater in one place than in another, but if these advantages are known they must generally be paid for.
New adaptations, however, may change materially the value of the land in a given locality as, for example, the discovery that a region is especially adapted to raising alfalfa, onions, cabbages, apples or peaches. Changing conditions, as the growth of population or better transportation facilities, may materially affect the attractiveness of a region from the standpoint of the farmer.
The competition of other regions which grow similar crops is a potent factor in determining the desirability of a region. For example, the farmers east of the Allegheny mountains during the nineteenth century competed with the farmers of the central West who had free, fertile, easily tilled land on which to grow maize, wheat and oats. Cattle and sheep were pastured on the open range. The twentieth century has found the land of this region settled and capitalized in some instances beyond that of the eastern states; thus one factor at least of competition has been eliminated.
While farm values readjust themselves in time, it often happens, especially in the older settled regions, that farm values are slow in reflecting these changes in economic conditions. Changed conditions often call for a change in farm methods which the habits and traditions of even one generation prevent. To the man who is able to apply the proper methods the region may be a desirable one, although under existing conditions the results may be unsatisfactory. The young man, however, is cautioned at this point not to be overconfident of his own ability. Under such circumstances it is well to study the problem with great care, because the methods which seem unwise to the casual observer may, after all, be found to be based upon sound economic principles.
A man of 25 who is looking for a location should not only study the present conditions of the locality, but try to predict what is likely to be the future of the region during the next third of a century, since this is the period in which he may reasonably expect to be personally interested, although later in life he will find himself quite as much interested in the more distant future on account of his children.
Nothing is more self-evident than that one should choose a region, especially as regards soil and climate, which is adapted to the crop or crops to be raised, yet there are probably more failures due to a lack of crop adaptation than to any other cause that is not personal to the man himself. Not only do apples, for their best success, require certain soil types, but different varieties of apples require for their best development, distinctly different types of soil as, for example, Rhode Island Greening, Baldwin, York Imperial and Grimes Golden. Each reaches its best development on different types of soil and some require different climatic conditions. In like manner apples and peaches require distinctly different types of soil for the best success of each and for this reason peaches are not desirable as fillers in apple orchards.
If at the proper season of the year one goes from Pittsburg to Chicago via Columbus and Indianapolis, he will see great fields of winter wheat and a considerable number of permanent pastures. From Chicago to Omaha he will see only occasionally a field of wheat and scarcely any permanent pasture. Oats have taken the place of wheat. In parts of Eastern Kansas and Oklahoma the predominant crop is winter wheat. Throughout the whole region from Pittsburg to Topeka, Kansas, the characteristic crop is maize or Indian corn. Between St. Paul and Fargo, the main crops are spring wheat and oats. One may travel from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Calgary, Alberta, a distance of over one thousand miles without seeing a field of maize. In some portions the main crop is wheat, in others it is oats.
These are illustrations of the crop adaptation over large areas, which has come about unconsciously, as has most crop adaptation. In other parts of the United States are to be found even more striking examples of crop adaptation, although the areas are much smaller, as in the case of tobacco, potatoes, celery, onions, apples, peaches and other fruits. Regions containing residual soils are more variable in crop adaptation than drift soils and require more careful watchfulness on the part of those who may wish to buy land.