Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1875 — A Varied Agriculture. [ARTICLE]

A Varied Agriculture.

Every year’s experience more completely demonstrates the wisdom of a varied agriculture. The farmer who depends mainly upon fine crop, although that may be the most important one grown, will find every few years that the supply of that product will exceed the demand so much that it will fall in price below the cost of production and sale. We use the latter term considerately because we are aware that the producer pays a large commission for the sale of his products. All the difference between the price received by the farmer and that paid by the consumer, after deducting the legitimate cost of handling, storage and transportation, may be set down as the cost of selling. Take the imported product, wheat. We think that a large majority of the farmers, East as well as West, will agree with us that the price this year is too low to pay cost of production. It may be said that the price of wheat is exceptionally low this year because the yield is good all over the world. Yes —that is true, the breadth of wheat sown every year is so great that a good crop, universally or generally, will so reduce the price that a large share of the growers must produce it at a loss. Take another product—apples. In years when the orchards of the country yield a fair crop the prices are too low to afford any profit to the producer, and a farmer who depends mainly upon his apple crop for income will be likely to find that his income falls considerably under his expenditures in such years. We think that farmers suffer much less from a glut of apples than from an overproduction of any of the leading cereals, because but few have a very large proportion of their farms in orchards. Undoubtedly it is better for the world that so great a breadth should be sown in breadstuff's, that a small yield per acre shall not result in a scarcity and cause suffering or starvation, but the instinct of self-preservation should induce farmers to so economize in farming that the failure or the over-production of any leading crop shall not result disastrously to their interests. The farmer upon 100 acres, who has a few acres in wheat, a few in corn, a few in oats, a few in barley and a few in portatoes and roots, and then has a liberal pasture and meadow, with four or five acres in apples, and as many more in pears, peaches, plums, quinces and cher ries, keeping a half-dozen cows, and perhaps twenty-five to forty long-wool grade sheep, will be likely to come out better, taking one year with another, than one who devotes the larger number of his acres to wheat or some other leading crop. If any one crop is a failure, or sells too low to afford any profit, the others may yield profit enough to prevent any general loss. — American Rural Home.