The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know

by Thomas Forsyth Hunt

Farming is no pink tea. It is a serious business. After the young farmer has selected the farm he must develop his farm scheme. He must contemplate well and seriously the philosophy which underlies his plans. Unless he sees clearly what he is striving to attain and unless he understands the effect of his methods, he must fail in great measure to obtain his goal.

Satisfactory results in farming cannot be obtained as a general practice if the man is only interested in the results of a single year. For this reason the itinerant tenant system will not be satisfactory unless the landlord has worked out a satisfactory scheme which he requires his tenant to follow.

It is not enough that a man shall grow a single large crop, but it is necessary that he should continue to grow a satisfactory crop at least at regular intervals. For example, a piece of land may be adapted to cabbage, celery, potatoes or hay. Assume for the moment it is adapted to cabbage and that by one or more seasons of preparation an enormous crop of cabbages may be secured. This fact is of little value unless sufficient quantity is raised and the process can be repeated annually. Cabbages cannot be grown again on this particular piece of land for from four to six years on account of club root. If the farmer does not have other areas which he can bring into cabbages year after year, for from three to five years, then he becomes a failure as a cabbage raiser. Even a perennial, like alfalfa or asparagus, should form a part of the general scheme of crop production if the most satisfactory results are to be obtained.

There are two general questions at the basis of all farm schemes: (1) How to obtain a fairly uniform succession of cash products year after year, and (2) how to keep up or improve the fertility of the soil economically while doing so. In other words, how to keep the investment from decreasing while it is earning a satisfactory and fairly uniform income.

It is necessary, therefore, to consider what products are to be sold and what are simply subsidiary to the cash products. The cash products may, of course, be soil products or animal products, but more likely they will be both. When animals form a large part of the enterprise the cropping system must be carefully adjusted to meet the needs of these animals. Many apparently trivial details must be considered, as for example, whether the cropping system furnishes too little or too much bedding for the live stock.

In considering profits the enterprise as a whole must be kept in view. For example, if a man is producing milk, it may be cheaper, so far as the production of milk is concerned, to allow the liquid excrement to run to waste rather than to arrange for sufficient bedding. If, however, by using an abundance of bedding and saving all the high-priced nitrogen and the larger part of the potash in the manure, he is able to raise twelve tons of silage in place of eight tons, or three tons of hay in place of two tons, his enterprise as a whole will be more profitable when he uses the extra amount of bedding, although so far as the production of a quart of milk is concerned the cost is increased. It may be that by feeding corn to cattle or sheep one will obtain only 50 cents a bushel for his maize, while his neighbor is selling it to the elevator at 60 cents. If, however, the man who feeds his maize year after year thereby raises 60 bushels instead of 40 bushels, his enterprise, as a whole, may be more profitable than that of his neighbor.

As a matter of fact, the Pennsylvania experiment station has substantially these two conditions in certain of its fertilizer plats. When for 25 years the conditions have been similar to those where crops are sold from the farm, the yields have been: Maize, 42 bushels; oats, 32 bushels; wheat, 14 bushels; and hay, 2,783 pounds per acre. But when conditions exist which represent the feeding of corn, oats and hay and the return of manure to the soil, the yields have been: Maize, 58 bushels; oats, 41 bushels; wheat, 23 bushels; and hay 4,190 pounds per acre. In the first instance the value of the products has been $15.75 an acre, while in the other case it has been $22.90 an acre.

Having worked out a cropping system that gives the proper yearly production of several crops desired, the next question to decide is how this cropping system and the disposition of the crops is going to affect the fertility of the soil. From a financial or economic point of view the most important soil element is nitrogen. First, because it costs from 18 to 20 cents a pound, while phosphoric acid can be purchased at five cents, potash at four cents; and, second, because of the readiness with which nitrogen may disappear from the soil under improper management, either through nitrification and leaching or by denitrification and passing back into the air.

Assuming a given type of management, the question is, How much of the required nitrogen will be obtained from the legumes in the cropping system, how much from the manure, and how much must be purchased in commercial fertilizers? No satisfactory cropping system can be devised at the present prices of farm products and cost of fertilizers for the production of the ordinary cereals and hay that does not include the production of some legume. Assuming a legume in the cropping scheme, the fertility of the soil may be maintained by yard manure alone or by commercial fertilizers alone. Illustrations of both methods are to be found in actual practice. Generally speaking, however, the use of yard manure supplemented with commercial fertilizers will be found more scientific and in the end the most economical.

A factor entering into this problem will be the amount of purchased feed. If considerable amounts of purchased feeds are used and the resulting manure carefully preserved and judiciously applied, the commercial fertilizers required will be reduced to the minimum.