VOL. XXIX.
INDIANAPOLIS. IND.  JUNE 2, 1894.
NO. 22.
What Is the Future of our Wheat Land?
[Paper read before the annual meeting of the rnion
Societies of Bush and Decatur counties at Milroy,
by 15. JT. Bennett, Esi|.. of Oreensburg.]
The subject of the paper assigned me on
to-day's program is in substance:
"What shall we do with our wheat lands
in view of the prevailing low price of
wheat, the visible supply on hand, and the
present prospect for the new crop?"
The text, if such term we may apply to
this subject, naturally divides into three
considerations.
1st. Do we wish to continue our present gait in wheat production?
2d. Is such advisable, even were we
assured, in the immediate future of remunerative prices?
3d. What disposition shall we make of
lands now given to the growing of that
wheat producing the surplus which
"bears" the market, when necessity compels us to reduce the present area of our
wheat lands?
These considerations we will treat in the
order stated.   And now the first:
"Do we wish to continue our present
gait in wheat production?"
I have read many ingenious articles
since the marked increase in wheat production and the like decrease in price,
stating facts and figures that on their face
would lead to bright hopes for the wheat
farmer in the immediate future.
Tito writers of these articles, mostly
magazine, state that our gradual increase
of population will make a certain steady
increased annual demand for 8,000,000
bushels of our wheat from our own people; that we have reached the topmost
round in the ladder of wheat production
and henceforth our yields will decrease,
for the reason that our virgin soil has been
exhausted; that our arid lands will not
produce wheat without irrigation and that
water can not be had in sufficient quantity
for such purpose, and if it could, the cost
of irrigation would make the crop one
highly unprofithble. And for a further
reason as the one conclusive, that all the
available land fitted for wheat growing in
this country has been and is now occupied
in the growth of that cereal, and that no
new wheat lands are to be or can be added
in any considerable amount to our present
area; that the same causes leading to an
increased demand and to a decreased supply in the immediate future apply with
equal force to every wheat consuming and
to every wheat exporting country on earth.
As a farther substantiation of their contentions, reference is made to the 20 per
cent increase of European population during the past 20 years with an increase of
European wheat production of 2 per cent,
yet with more than a 2 per cent decrease
in the production of rye. As Europe consumes in bread more rye than wheat, the
bread supply of Europe is slowly decreasing, the continuous deficit to be supplied
from importations from rye and wheat
exporting countries.
That India with her 250,000,000 subjects
has during the past 10 years decreased her
wheat acreage more than a million acres
her annual yield from 300,000,000 to 235,-
000,000 bushels; that her wheat exportation during that time having made an
annual increase from 13 to 33 million
Dushels is due to the distressing poverty
of the people and the compulsion to supplant wheat bread with the coarser and
cheaper foods. You can easily make the
calculation that the amount of wheat now
annually consumed by the inhabitant of
India for bread and seed is per capita less
than one bushel, while with us the amount
is five bushels or upwards.
They further insist that the decrease in
India's acerage shows that the
AVAILABLE WHEAT ABEA
has  been  all  occupied;  that a want of
acienoe applied to her agriculture, which
means successive cropping, mnst impoverish and still further decrease the yields
in that our principal competitive country
in the markets of the world. These are a
few of the claims set forth why the time
is even now at hand when we shall realize from home and foreign demands for
our wheat, the prices of bygone years.
Notwithstanding this apparent conclusive showing favoring the continuation of
our present manner of wheat growing tny
belief is that it should be suddenly and
radically changed—that we discontinue
the lively gait of the few past years.
The rosy hued outlook for the American
wheat farmer pictured in the article referred to,   I do not expect to be realized.
The plain unvarnished facts now confronting us augur poorly for the future.
Our statisticians have failed to even approximate fairly the wheat crops of the
last few years. The visible supply has always been an astonishment and has
served only to confound the farmer holding his wheat for the rise in prices. For
these astounding yields a number of agencies are responsible.
The very general adoption of commercial fertil'zers have and will augment
wheat yields to an amount hardly calcu-
able. Our clay hills and white flats, by
the liberal use of these, produce wheat
crops enormous in yield and superior in
quality, while a few years since, these
lands yielded barely the bread and seed for
their owner.
The increased building of railways ramifying every district of our domain,
coupled with steamship and canal lines,
has so cheapened transportation that the
farms of every State in the Union stands
on practically the plane, inviting and encouraging the establishment of bonanza
wheat farming.
The railways, with grain elevators
every four or five miles encourage the
raising and sale of grain to the neglect of
stock raising. Nor has the building of
railways and canals affected the American
wheat grower alone, but Russia is now
building a line of railway with branch
lines across the dominions, and furnishing a speedy and cheap outlet for her
magnilic9nt wheat lands; India has done
the same. Under her British rule lines
are being constructed for like purposes in
other parts of Asia, along the Mediterranean, in Australia, in New South Wales
and in South America, In all parts of the
globe where the climate and soil is adapted
to wheat culture.
The Suez canal, coupled with English
shipping, has as much as any one public
work added to our competition In the
European wheat market by giving a
direct transit and a cheap shipment for
India's surplus wheat.
The construction of the Nicaraugua
canal, which capital will surely push to an
early completion, will still further add to
the strength of our competitors in foreign
markets by furnishing to them a direct
and cheap water transit and practically
placing the entire western half of South
America on an eqallty with ourselves.
By reason of our railway system the
farmer of the east whose land costs f 100
per acre and the middle State farmer
whose lands are worth $50 per acre, compete with the western farmer whose lands
cost J3 to $5 par acre. In order to compete
successfully with odds so fearfully against
them, the eastern and middle State farmer
purchases fertilizers and doubles his acreage in order to realize from his wheat crop
the sums of former years. The western
farmer with no concern for the preservation of his soil, without money, land to
improve, houses and barns to build and
fences to make, resorts to the quickest
method to realize the needed ready money
by sowing largely to wheat. He harvests
his crop with the header and the new ma
chine drawn by 26 horses cutting and
threshing as it goes. Thus continues the
vain struggle, increasing the yield, lowering the price, sinking deeper into the
mire, with little prospect of extraction.
The increase of large land holdings, with
consequent tenant farming, is inimical to
stock raising and favorable and inviting to
grain raising and grain selling. But that
existing condition giving a specially
gloomy aspect to wheat growing Is the
complete line of machinery employed from
the seeding to the garnering of the wheat
crop—from the gang plow to the cyclone
stacker. Thus Is the labor of man so
greatly multiplied. Three bushels of
wheat are now grown with the cost of one
in the primitive period. The adaptation
of machinery to wheat growing and handling will tend to continuous blind raising
of these enormous wheat crops.
In the face of 612,000,000 bushels of wheat
in 1892,560,000,000 bushels In 1893, a continuous freight train loaded with wheat 7,000
miles in length—10 solid freight trains from
here to New York City, side by side; with
Russia and Germany entering Into a treaty
by which rye enters Germany from Russia
practically free, depriving us of our German trade in rye and lessening it in
wheat; with that famed wheat land of Argentine Republic, reputed the superior of
our prided Northwest territory as a wheat-
producing country, with her 240,000,000
acres of wheat land that can, and will
sooner or later, comprise the extent of her
wheat field, exporting 20,000,000 bushels of
wheat last year, and will, It is estimated,
export 50,000,000 this year, a territory
within herself capable of doubling the
present world's crop with only the low
average of 10 bushels per acre required,
when only yesterday she imported from
us the wheat and flour for her people—in
the face of all these fact, I say, we are
without hope for any very marked betterment In the near future, and should
AT ONCE KEOBGANIZE OUR FABMING.
Our second consideration Is that being
assured of remunerative prices in the immediate future shall we continue our present course?
Every argument negatives such a
proposition. This means successive crop-
pings, shipping to Europe and foreign
lands the fertile elements of the soil to enrich their soils, not ours. Our exports are
in the form of wheat; but little flour. Did
we only export our grain manufactured
into flour, If export we must, the milling
industry of our land would be greatly enhanced, giving work to additional thous
ands in grinding grain, building and
equipping mills, and, not least of all, the
quantity of bran and midddlings so retained would greatly benefit every stock
raiser and add to the proper care and enrich
ment of the soil. These are no mean advantages in favor of the foreign miller and
foreign lands as well to give the rich
profits of grinding 100,000,000 to 150,000,000
bushels of wheat annually to foreign millers, or the profits of grinding one bushel
out of every four or five bushels that we
grow, or a yielding to the foreigner of
about one-fourth of our milling industry.
After all, can we not profit by the example France sets for us, with an area less
than that of the State of Texas, whose
annual yield of wheat is second to that of
no nation on earth, save that of the United
States? France is an importer of wheat—
not an exporter; applying to her national
economy the principle adopted by every
true farmer, of carrying onto her domain
more than she carries off, and France Is
veritably a garden spot, with a population
rich and prosperous, astonishing the
world by the payment of the war In
demnlty to Germany in so Incredible
short a time, in the prosecution of her
Panama scheme, and other enterprises of
like dimensions.
The contention might be made that we
continue our shipments of grain and
DEPEND   UI'ON THE   OOMMEBCIAL   FEBT1L-
IZEB
to maintain the fertility of the soil. These
fertilizers add little plant food to the soil.
They are chemical agents applied to the
soil to act as a solvent upon the soil to
compel the releasing of plant food locked
up In the soil.
The continuous use of the fertilizers applied to the same field year by year to produce successive crops of wheat means the
slow impoverishment of that field. I can
liken the action of fertilizers on soil only
to that of a sponge saturated with water.
You squeeze the sponge and dry it. By
the continuous application of fertilizers to
the field you dry it of those elements
essential to the crop being grown, the only
redeeming feature being an increased
growth of grass secured where proper rotations are had, which is a source of betterment to any soil. But continuous fertilizing for continuous crops means what I
insist upon as to Its ultimate action on
any soil.
Then as a solution of this vexed problem
let us apply the same principle to insure
our national prosperity that the farmer
applies to the enrichment of his soil—export as little wheat as possible, grow aa
nearly as can be the amount the home
market demands and not have staring us
longer in the face this "visible supply" so
hostile to even living prices. A market at
our doors Is the superior of any market
across any seas.
This brings us now to our third and last
consideration—the serious part of the
qnestion:
"What disposition shall we make of
lands now given to the growing of that
wheat producing the surplus which 'bears'
the market, turning as we should from
our present method of farming?"
We are not to abandon the growing of
wheat. It is in reality the pivotal crop in
the rotation of crops to secure a set of
grass. We are to grow less wheat—sow 18
acres where we sowed 24, exporting little
if any; and what dispostion shall we make
of the six acres—our decreased acreage?
This reduction can be accomplished
easily and naturally by sowing to wheat
only when desiring to seed the land in
grass; by never sowing land twice In wheat
in succession. I believe one-fourth or one-
fifth of the land in our two counties sown
in wheat each year is sown on a wheat
stubble.
Adopt different rotations. Instead of
corn, wheat and clover, our almost universal rotation, decide upon a five year's
rotation. First year corn; second year
oats; third year wheat; fourth and fifth years
grass; the soil responding to only one crop
in the one year. Whereas, with our three
year's rotation a drain must in one year
be placed upon the soil for a corn crop,
and as well the fall growth of the wheat
following, not conducive to young plant
growth. This rotation will give us from
our field one crop of wheat in five years;
not one in three, as Is the almost universal
rule at present. Such a rotation, too,
would combine the grain and stock farmer
and develop the true plan of agriculture.
Save the wheat thus shipped from the field
one year in five. All else could and would
be fed to the stock on the farm and utilized
in their care and comfort and in turn such
management would build up and improve
the farm. I have in my mind a few of
my farmer friends who grow no wheat,
but instead oats in the rotation necessary
to turn the land to grass, consuming all
the products of their farms in the growing
and fattening of live stock. Such farming
fattens the farm year by year. This is
true agriculture—the benevolent plan-
leaving to our children a goodly heritage
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