Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 August 1877 — A Stimulus. [ARTICLE]

A Stimulus.

A stimulus is a good thing sometimes. Every year farmers find something to stimulate sowing more lanftte wheat than is fortheir best good, we think. Tfcww, the stimulus is a big and powerful one—war in the wheat-growing districts of Russia and a few thousands of men fighting. While there is eveiy probability that wheat will bring a good price for a year to come, and that we can find a ready market abroad for all that we can raise, yet it is very questionable whether it will be good policy for farmers to change their regular routine or course of cropping to sow a larger breadth to wheat. Half our population are farmers, and they need a season or two of good crops and good prices—two things which seldom come together. Good crops are obtained only by the best modes of culture. Under the ordinary mode of raising wheat the crop is oftener light than large and remunerating. Every year the disappointments are nearly universal among farmers when the wheat crop is threshed. They admit that they make but little money out of wheat, but this certainly is oftener owing to the way the crop is grown than tosany unavoidable weather influence. Now, if under the great stimulus of a big and long war, farmers sow an extra large breadth to wheat and put it in a careless and un-farmer-like manner, the crop will surely fall far below the common average—low as that is. We are quite sure that unless extra care is taken with the land in making it rich and in cultivating it well we shall lose more than we shall make by the operation. A farmer cannot alter his rotation for a single year without disturbing his plans for years to come. What then would you have farmers do? it may be asked. Sow no more land but prepare die usual quantity in a better manner. This is our advioe. Then you will realize as much, or more, and be in no danger of loss from a general change in your course of rotation. System and an adherence to it are of quite as much importance for a farmer as tor the merchant, though it is not so considered. No farmer can alter his reg-ularly-established system of farm operations—if he has one—without great loss. If he has no system, but is governed by every passing event, then it makes but little difference what he sows, or how much of this, or how little of that. Let the needle point steadily to the pole and then you may be guided safely. When disturbed by chance or local influences it is no longer a safe trust. — Detroit Tribune.