OCR Text |
Show CORN ON THE PLAINS Comparison Is Made of Average Yields and Profits. Much Importance Is Attached to Fact That Corn Leaves Field in Excellent Excel-lent Condition for the Crop That Is to Follow. Kxpet'ietii'e lias shown that corn grown for fodder or the silo is it le.u-t a safe crop, and perhaps as productive pro-ductive as any that oouid be grown in the great plains area. The response to the diiTerent modes of culture and crop sequence, however, is greater in the southern and central portions of the area than in the northern, accord-int accord-int to the new department bulletin. No. -I'-1. ome 14 field stations are situated in the great plains area, which covers ten states. Montana, North Dakota, Da-kota, Smith Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska. Ne-braska. Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma. Texas and New Mexico. The climate in this area is often classified as semi-arid, semi-arid, bm as the variations in humidity from season to season are so great, some years have a relatively high precipitation pre-cipitation and may bo followed by years of drought. Thus climate and the distribution of rainfall play a very important part in determining the size of the coin crop. Necessarily, in a bulletin dealing with such a wide expanse ex-panse of territory, deductions when not applied to a specific station must be very general. Corn crowing possesses merit as a preparation of the land for a crop of small grain. When these two factors, yield of corn or fodder and the influence influ-ence of the crop on the soil, are combined com-bined in one crop, they make its growth of double importance. Corn is the only crop that at present offers this advantage in the great plains area, and which at the same time lends itself it-self to a large acreage ind to a general gen-eral farming system. Potatoes as a crop may have the same effect as common com-mon fallow crop, but do not lend themselves them-selves so well to growth on a large acreage. Such crops as spring wheat, oats and barley in the great plains area, when following corn, have consistently given higher yields as compared with other methods of preparing a seedbed for these crops. Very often these small-grain small-grain crops have yielded the highest, or approximately the highest, yield when grown on disked corn land, and when tlie cost of preparation is considered, con-sidered, this plan was also found to be productive of the greatest profit. Therefore, in the growing of corn much importance is attached to the fact that it leaves the field in excellent excel-lent condition for the crop following. A striking point brought out in the bulletin is the uniformity in the amount of stover or fodder produced by all methods at the stations in Montana Mon-tana and North Dakota. Corn on summer-tilled land, especially espe-cially at the more southern stations of Garden City, Kan., Dalhart and Ama-rillo, Ama-rillo, Tex., showed a marked increase in stover yield over other methods of preparing the soil. The increase, however, how-ever, was not sufficient to make it the most profitable except at Scottsbluff, Neb. Corn as a grain crop has not been produced at a profit at eight of the thirteen stations by any method. But when a value of four dollars per ton is assigned to the stover or fodder, corn has been profitably grown by some method at all but one of the stations. sta-tions. No one method of seedbed preparation prepara-tion stands out as essential to the corn production. Thus the prevailing conditions con-ditions with relation to farm labor, farm capital, type of soil and weeds to be dealt with are the prime factors in determining differences in practice. |