Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 185, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1917 — Wheat to Be Sown Very Extensively This Fall. [ARTICLE]

Wheat to Be Sown Very Extensively This Fall.

The call of the secretary of agriculture for increasing the wheat acreage of Indiana 25 per cent, means the sowing of 2,800,000 acres of wheat this fall. Although this seems large at firsft thought, it is not large when we make a short analysis. There are in Indiana 215,800 farms. If the above wheat acreage were equally distributed, there would be only 13.4 acres on each farm. The average farm contains 98 acres. If we discard 40 per cent of the land as being unsuited to wheat production we could grow 3,000,000 acres and still only grow wheat on the same land once every four years. Surely this is not too often. Many farmers are now getting $75 an acre for their wheat crop. There are some, of course, who are not doing so well, but on the average, farmers of the state are making more money on the wheat crop than ever before. This is stimulating a great deal of interest and the guarantee of $2.00 per x bushel which the government has placed on the crop to be seeded this fall is sufficient argument that the wheat is needed.

Many farmers who have usually grown a large acreage of oats will this year sow considerable wheat. Many farmers in Benton, Newton and White counties have made this decision as is shown by inquiries about seed wheat that are daily coming to J. C.' Beavers, state leader of wheat campaign. In these sections 60 bushels of oats to the acre is considered a good yield. At present prices such a crop would be worth about $34 an acre. This same land will produce 20 and 25 bushels of wheat to the acre. At $2 per bushel wheat is much more profitable than oats and for this reason a greatly increased acreage of wheat will be sown this fall. By sowing some wheat instead of all oats, labor is better distributed at harvest time, as wheat is cut before oats. It is also easier to obtain a good stand of clover in wheat than in oats. These are points which thinking farmers are carefully considering and will add much impetus to the increased wheat production movement