Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1876 — How Much Corn to an Acre? [ARTICLE]

How Much Corn to an Acre?

Experience proves that as a rule the larger the yield is per acre the less is the cost of production per bushel. It is therefore important not only to be able to get uniformly large yields, without impoverishing the soil, but also to know with a reasonable prospect of success. How much corn is it possible to grow on an acre! As was remarked in the Era a short time ago, on our fertile Michigan lands 80 to 10Q bushels of shelled corn ought to be an ordinary crop, and it ought not to cost over thirty cents per bushel, exclusive of interest on the capital invested in the land. But the yield which, by a judicious system of high farming, it is possible to obtain with a tolerable degree of certainty is probably far in excess of 100 bushels. The results of a series of experiments conducted by members of the Elmira (N. Y.) Farmers’ Club seem totilnt at the possibilities of the case. In one experiment the yield from a single grain owas twenty-four ounces, equivalent to a bushel from thirtyseven grains, and this rate of production for an entire acre, allowing to each grain four square feet of soil, would give 204 bushels of shelled corn. In another experiment the yield from a single grain was thirty-one and a-half ounces, which would give a bushel from twenty-eigltt grains, or 888 bushels per acre. In another the yield was fhirty-sevep and a-half ounces, equivalent to a bushel from twenty-four grains, or 453 bushels per acre. In the most successful experiment of the series the yield from a single grain was forty-three and a-half ounces, which is at the rate of a bushel to twenty-one grains, or 500 bushels per acre. What has been done can be done again. What one grain of corn has been made to produce, every grain of 10,000 like it, allowing a reasonable margin for accidents, may be made to produce. What a field has been made to produce in a favorable season, it and every other field like it may be made to produce in every favorable season. As yet wa have scarcely begun to realize the possibilities of high farm-ing.—-New Era.