Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1901 — GROWING MACARONI WHEAT. [ARTICLE]

GROWING MACARONI WHEAT.

Great Northwest Equal* Italy in Producing Thia Variety. Macaroni as good as that of Italy, has been grown in the Dakotas, Kansas and Nebraska. So successful

have been government tests that American manufacturers are offering No. 2 northern prices for wild goose macaroni wheat, which was formerly invariably rejected. It has been the theory of the millers that these wheats contain gluten in too large quantities for making good bread. It is also difficult to mill, because of the hard grain, and its flour has been found gritty and too coarse to compete with that of other wheats. Macaroni wheats differ radically from the ordinary bread wheats and in the field look more like barley than wheat. The thorongh establishment of this industry will do much for the seini-arid plains. A million or more of acres can thus be given to profitable wheat raising which, on account of drought, have heretofore been entirely idle or less profitably employed. The farmers of the West and Northwest are awakening to the importance of this industry and carload lots of macaroni wheat are In demand for seed next year. The official tests showed a yield of one-third to onehalf more per acre than any other wheats grown side by side’ with them, and in 1000, when other wheats were almost a complete failure in thetDakotas, the macaroni varieties produced a good yield of grain of excellent quality. The section best suited for raising macaroni wheats, according to the government map, begins west of the fifth meridian and includes North and South Dakota, Nebraska, except extreme eastern part; eastern Colorado, Western and central Kansas, western Oklahoma, extreme eastern New Mexico and central and western Texas. The United States imports over 16,000,000 pounds of macaroni annually, at an expense of SBOO,000. Judge Darling of Vermont has formally assumed the duties of Assistant Sect*tary of the Navy.