Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1912 — FARMING THE AID of ELECTRCITY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FARMING THE AID of ELECTRCITY

nr NCLE SAM is matting a try at B I using the magic current to B I help the growth of crops. In I order to "test this new idea I the government has recently WSL J laid out what is believed to be the first "electric fann” in g the United States. It isn’t a || very big farm, to be sure, II having, to begin with, a total area of only an acre and a half. All the same, the prog-

rees of vegetation on this little plot will be ■watched with keen interest, for it may point the Vay to helping the farmers of the future in Important respects and even may be the means of making some of them independent of climate. Of course it is not sought to convey the impression that the present undertaking by the United States department of agriculture at its most important experiment farm is the first effort to make' electricity useful on the farm. Public as well as private enterprise Invaded that field long ago and thus we find today many farmers in various parts of the country developing electricity for home consumption by. means of power plants right on the premises, the energy for generating being supplied by the gasoline engines which are becoming so common’ in the rural districts, or through the harnesstag of water power which has been done successfully on so many farms. Moreover, the electricity thus.generated is not used merely for illumination, etc., inside the farm buildings , Progressive farmers and dairymen have adapted the twentieth century power to many tasks that had formerly to be done by human hands —as, for exajnple, milking and churning and feed cutting. But Uncle Sam’s new venture In electric farming pursues quite a different path. This latest function of the magic current is not to supplant manual labor, but to assist nature. To particularise, ft popular form, It may be explained that the idea is to have electricity supplement sunlight in its influence upon growing crops. The artificial warmth and glow will be called Into play as a proxy for the burning beams from the orb above on days when there Is no sunlight and in the mornings and evenings of the short winter days when old Sol is working shorter hours than In mid-summer. Perhaps electricity cannot ever be expected to prove so great a stimulus to growing plants as is powerful sunlight, but preliminary experiments have proven that It will help some and the object of Uncle Sam’s present undertaking is to determine just how much assistance electricity will render under the conditions of soil and climate, etc., which confront the average Americah farmer. The reader might naturally suppose, if he hasn’t been informed otherwise, that if Uncle flam was going to employ electricity to counterfeit sunbeams he would - dd It by calling Into use powerful electric lights, which seem to be.about the next best thing to sunlight in brilliancy. Well, that_was the way it was done by several of the leading scientists of Europe who have rather gotten ahead of us in such -tests. They hung big arc lamps In greenhouses and they lengthened the growing day for plants and vegetables by flooding the hot houses with light -for several hours after sundown each day. The result was that one prominent foreigner has produced splendid strawberries tn a much shorter time than would have been possible had nature been ah lowed to take her own course, and our own Corneil university in New York state was equally successful in hurrying the growth of lettuce, radishes and other vegetables by this same method. But Uncle flam is not going to follow blindly in this beaten path. He is taking a new tack. ._ ...<. The principle of Uncle Sam’s new "electric farm” —if we may call one miniature wheat' field a farm—is to employ the electric current Itself and not the electric lamps to spur nature in her work. This is interesting in itself and the project will be of added value in Its results from the fact that the growing under electricity is to go on out of doors instead of te the artificial atmosphere cf a hot bouse. Moreover, in order to approximate average conditions the experts of Uncle flam’s bureau of plant industry have -chosen as the scene of their experiment, not a prize farm, but a tract on the largest experiment farm of the United States department of agriculture located near Arlington, Virginia. This land was formerly a part of the historic estate of Robert E- the Confederate general, but it was neglected for many years after the war and , 11 cannot be said to offer more than average opportunities far tilling, if they be that good. The appearance of Uncle flam’s “electric farm” is well calculated to rouse the curiosity of any chance farmer riding along the road, even if be did not see the warning signs cautioning him that he must not get within four feet of the wires carrying a current of 100,000 volts —electricity powerful enough to do all sorts of damage if given the opportunity. What the farmer beholds is a plowed area dotted at intervals of a couple of rods with slender wooden poles about seven feet ft height At one corner of the field is the sbcalled “power house” of this farm, a small frame building from which leads a wire connecting with the wires of a near-by Interurban trolley system. If the farmer looks close he

will observe that the slender posts support a perfect network of > wires. Stretching from post to post are main wires, supported by huge insulators of a pattern usually seen only In the vicinity of-Niagara Falls and elsewhere where higfi-pbwer current Is generated or transmited. Cropping these principal wires at right angles—six to the span between each two poles—are finer wires, so that, taken as a whole, there is provided a sort of wire screen suspended about the height of a man above the furrows. ‘ Were it a case of switching on electric light when It was desired to give impetus to crops in the ground it would be apparent to the casual-onlooker wh,en the activity was in progress, but with Uncle Sam’s method of administering the electric treatment things are not so obvious, hence the warning signs that hang from the wires. Nevertheless, for all that,

there ate no lamps the electric current is so strong that at night, the wires give off a sort of glow that is Visible to any person approaching them. In daylight only a scarcely audU ble sound indicates the "leakage” from the electric! ty -1 aden discharge wires. The theory which the government scientists, under the direction of Dr. Lyman J.

Briggs, are trying to demonstrate is that static, electricity when applied to soli and air will stimulate the growth of plants in such environment. There is ample evidence of the soundness of the* theory within reasonable limits. Indeed, the benefit that may be conferred by such electric discharges is illustrated by the flourishing development (until frostbitten) of plants In the Arctic regions where there K of course, mighty little sunlight, but where the atmosphere Is heavily charged -with electricity. Moreover, preliminary experiments which were recently conducted in England, along the same lines that Uncle Sam is pursuing indicated that there was an increase of 30 to 40 per cent in the yield of wheat that had been thus dosed with electricity, and the wheat likewise brought a better price per bushel after a test had evidenced that It was superior for bread baking. • The officials of the department of agriculture make It very clear that their present venture in electroculture —as the new activity is termed—is purely experimental and they make no prophecies as to just what they hope to discover. The Interesting point is that they are determined to find out just how much electricity will do to aid the farmer. They have made the most elaborate plans, t 00,., for measuring the Influence exerted. To this end the experimental area has been apportioned in fourteen plots of uniform size and all have been planted in the same good grade of winter wheat Seven of the beds He under the network of wires and thus receive the. benefit

ot the electric discharges, while side by side with each of these electrified beds is a “check portion” or plot of equal size where no electric Shower falls. By conquering the yield from the two plots In each pair and by contrasting the production by the seven pairs of beds the officials will be enabled to gauge, very accurately just what influence the electrical factor exerts on the harvest It may be added that It is not the intention at, any time to keep the electric current flowing over the wire-sheltered area continuously day and night. That would be likely to do more ham than good. Late afternoons and early mornings will be chosen for giving an electric boost to. the growing wheat and in no instance, probably, will Dr. Briggs have, his odd cultivator at work for more than one-third of the time in any given twenty-four hours.