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Show Powerful Allies Aid Farmer in Battle Against Bugs, Infection and Erosion . . : !: illllliMlj ! -. ft '' ' h Experiment Stations, County Agents Fight Crop Destroyers. How the farmer fares in his never-ending battle against insect pests, weather, disease,: erosion and the thousand and one other hazards farm life is heir to, will largely determine how well he succeeds in meeting meet-ing Uncle Sam's ever-increasing call for more production of foods, dairy products, fibers and fats. Luckily, the farmer has his own army, navy, marine corps, coast guard, and air force to battle and vanquish his enemies. Who comprise com-prise these armed forces? The agricultural agri-cultural experiment stations and the extension services of his state land grant colleges. The way these services help the farmer to combat any production troubles old or new that come his way, is described by M. N. Beeler, in the current issue of Capper's Farmer. "The trouble which meets a man at any dawn or in the dead of night may be as old as Bang's disease (brought .to America by Cortez in 1521) or Hessian fly (introduced into the colonies by German hirelings during the Revolution)," writes Mr. Beeler. "It may be as new as late potato blight in the Red river valley, val-ley, or the attack of European corn borer in Illinois. Trouble may be as persistent as bindweed, smut, codling moth or boll weevil, as complicated complicat-ed as malnutrition originating in and nutritional troubles of crops, plants and foods are legion. How the army of scientists from the land grant colleges has fought and wot battles for the farmer against these and other adversaries forms a fascinating tale. Make Seed Germinate. When Iowa farmers reported sweet clover seed didn't germinate properly, proper-ly, the state agricultural experiment station discovered the cause was hard seed and made a scarifier that corrected the trouble. That was 30 years ago and was the forerunner of many more modern devices and methods, the most recent of which is a process by the Fort Hays, Kan., station for "waking" buffalo grass seed. Then there was that matter of "Laryngot racheitis" down in New Jersey. Sounds professorish, doesn't it? But it has an earthy connotation to any poullryman who has lost 20 to 60 per cent of his flock. The New Jersey station found an inoculation that protects the birds from this disease. i A shortage of spraying machinery threatened the crop of certain Pennsylvania Penn-sylvania tato growers in 1942. The state college extension service met that threat by organizing 50 spray rings to serve 1,500 farms and protect pro-tect 10,000 acres. An average of 30 farmers used each machine. Increased In-creased production was estimated at 1,376,000 bushels. So the story goes. One of the troubles that plagues farmer on the plains is "poisoning" of cattle by wheat pasture. The Oklahoma station sta-tion investigated and recommended a remedy which included feeding a little dry roughage. The Kansas college col-lege not only discovered a success- GRASSIIOPPEKS and locusts are among the worst scourges In many farming regions. f ' - ' 'I V ' - I 1888 the investigations in cooperation coopera-tion with Texas which made control of Texas fever tick possible. A mysterious livestock disease, observed ob-served by Marco Polo in China more than 600 years ago, which afflicted army horses at Fort Randall, Neb., was explained only in 1931. The trouble is caused by feed grown on soil containing selenium. The South Dakota station has announced control con-trol and remedies. The list of achievements is almost endless. Substitutes for pyrethrum have been produced by the Delaware Dela-ware station. Beginning in 1900 the West Virginia station worked out the fly-free date for controlling Hessian fly. Tennessee discovered and introduced in-troduced cryolite to replace scarce I arsenicals as an, insecticide. Montana Mon-tana instituted the feeding of iodized io-dized salt during pregnancy to prevent pre-vent goiter' losses of new-born pigs, lambs, calves and colts. Nebraska checked the potency of commercial ' serums offered in control of swine erysipelas, with resultant standardization standard-ization of effective protection. By breedirfg a wilt-resistant cotton cot-ton strain, the Alabama station saved the cotton-growing industry of the southern part of the state. Purdue experiment station in Indiana Indi-ana has produced a new Hessian-fly Hessian-fly resistant wheat. New York has announced a new organic spray which kills late fruit blooms, materially ma-terially reduces the hand labor of thinning, and induces annual bearing bear-ing in varieties which normally produce pro-duce fruit every other year. Develop Borer-Resistant Corn. The Ohio station has demonstrated demonstrat-ed that milk fever can be greatly reduced by feeding four ounces of irradiated yeast daily to cows for four weeks before and one week after aft-er freshening. Another Ohio station sta-tion project was the development of borer-resistant corn hybrids. Experiments at Pennsylvania and elsewhere disclose that fowl paralysis, paraly-sis, which caused a $43,000,000 loss in 10 poultry states one year, can be controlled by selective breeding and culling. But lest any farmer get the notion no-tion that the scientific research job has been completed and that he can get along without it, Mr. Beeler suggests that he remember just one menace wheat rust. "Ceres was a stem rust resistant variety distributed by North Dakota in 1926," he points out. "By 1933 it occupied 5,000.000 acres. But certain cer-tain physiologic races of rust increased in-creased and laid it low. Then the Minnesota station brought out Thatcher in 1934. It spread to 14,-500,000 14,-500,000 acres in the United States and Canada by 1940. Now Thatcher is on the way out, because of susceptibility sus-ceptibility to leaf rust. But the Minnesota Min-nesota station announces New-hatch, outyickling Thatcher by 36 per cent for three years, to be released in 1944." EROSION, though slow and unspectacular? Alters, laud productivity tremendously. This Kansas field, too sleep to terrace, was planted with corn in 1942. There was no protective covering sown on it. Wind and j rain scraped another layer off the already thin topsoil in the spring of 1 1943. Land like this should be in pasture. ful treatment for black-leg in calves, in 1914, but through extension it so increased the use that dosage costs declined from 50 to 10 cents. This station likewise introduced copper carbonate treatment of bunt smut of wheat, sorghums and millet. When the New England coastal hurricane damaged 10 to 75 per cent of trees in farm orchards, the extension exten-sion service of Rhode Island, Connecticut Con-necticut and Massachusetts worked out a rehabilitation program that saved thousands of trees. Control Fever Tick. Colorado potato growers were faced with an infestation of bacterial ring in 1938. The station found a remedy. Cattle fever tick had prevented pre-vented development of cattle raising rais-ing in Louisiana up to 1936. Extension Exten-sion workers and animal husbandry researchers led the fight to stamp it out. Missouri had inaugurated in i j poor soil, as evident as i grasshopper grass-hopper scourge, as mysterious as baby pig disease, as commonplace as labor shortage, as rare as foot j end mouth disease, as little as ants I n the kitchen, as big as a complete com-plete management and production' program." Assistance Is at Hand. But whatever the difficulty, help In most cases is no farther away than the county extension agent, or the land grant college, Mr. Beeler points out. Potentialities for trouble trou-ble can be appreciated when such an every-day animal as the hog is subject sub-ject to more than 60 afflictions. Poultry Poul-try may succumb to any one or a combination of 89. The Indiana experiment ex-periment station lists 18 common enemies of corn within that state in the category of diseases. And an Ohio report credits these same diseases dis-eases with a 19,000,000-bushel yield reduction in a single year. This ! damage is in addition to losses from borers, chinch bugs, ear worms, grasshoppers, aphids, root lice and a host of other insects. Continuing experimental projects are reported by the Arkansas station sta-tion in combat with a few enemies of cotton, such as wilt, boll weevil, seed-destroying diseases; aphids, leaf worms, boll worms, red spider, flea hopper, root rot and just plain soil poverty. Any sheepman, says Mr. Beeler, can count a dozen profit and life-taking afflictions of his (lock, but there are at least 30 miscellaneous miscellane-ous diseases and 40 internal para- I sites besides foot rot, sore mouth, I scab, ticks, pregnancy and lung I diseases. Furthermore, the U. S. department depart-ment of agriculture year book for 1942 devotes 112 pages to diseases and pests of cattle and explains there are 70 or more species of bo- ' vine infesting tapeworms and roundworms. round-worms. Books have been written about the ailments ot horses and mules. The insect, fungous, virus ' .... v , ' ? ; 1 j ' ' i , I -"'' f " 1 ' f , ' ' .i 1 ' ' 1 " -, . 1 CHINCH HUGS ruin millions of bushels of corn every year, as do cutworms, army worniH, and other pent, ninny of which are (lilTloult to control. |