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Show Fouroote I loll prairie Hops gathered from 320 arres treated the day before by one man with 80 quarts of poisoned barley DURING the present year about $150,000,000 worth of the food wo so urgently need will be destroyed by native rodent animals (other than house mice and rats) which devour tho crops. Chief among them are ground squirrels, prairie dogs pocket gophers, rabbits, cotton rats, meadow mlee and field mice. Up to now their depredations .havo been regarded as inevitable and uncontrollable. un-controllable. But at last the problem has been definitely solved. Large-scale Large-scale experiments have proved that by OO-operatlve effort on the part of farmers these four-footed pests can be eliminated not merely for a time, but permanently at a cost equal to a small fraction of the damage the ordinarily do In a single year. In this movement the Federal Government Gov-ernment has enlisted the help of township, town-ship, county and State agricultural organizations. or-ganizations. Farmers have eagerly Joined in it Returns In augmented crop yields (duo to the wiping out of the pests) have so far surpassed expectations ex-pectations as to engender widespread enthusiasm. The most extensive and thoroughly organized campaign against crop-destroying crop-destroying rodents (on a State-wide BCale) has been developed, under Federal Fed-eral direction, in the great grain-producing areas of North Dakota In that region the initial attack was aimed at the gopher, which burrows beneath the ground .mi eats the roots of growing plants. Poison wan the W( ipon used, and mors than 98 per cent of the gopher population in a territory ter-ritory covering millions of acres was destroyed by the first application. Public funds were supplied to buy poison In groat quantities, and grain mixed with It was furnished at wholesale whole-sale cost, to farmers, who applied it (under expert Instruction) to the gopher burrows In the spring of last year more than 19.000 farmers in North Dakota were enlisted In this movement, and as a result 7.500,000 acres were virtually freed from io-dents io-dents of this species. This means a saving of 51.000.000 worth of food In the present year alone. Tho con' of eliminating tho gophers was less than five cents an acre, including hire of labor. A small amount of follow-up work disposes of the few survivors, ridding the land permanently of the affliction. Like methods have proved equally effective In Idaho, Oregon. Montana, Nevada and California, for the destruction de-struction not onlyr of gophers, but of other rodent pests. Prairie dogs, w'hlch lay waste the grain and vegetable crops, are giving way before systema-tized systema-tized poisoning campaigns Likewise jack rabbits, which devastate the JH fields of wheat and other cereals in the Far West. Civilization has started out in serious earnest to get rid of these destroyers of the country's food sup-ply. sup-ply. They havo got to go. and the means whereby they can be eliminated lies in just three words intelligent, co-operative effort. |