THE ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL
We have seen what a worker with very little money can do and how he
can succeed. A small capital, however, can be used to increase the
returns to as great advantage on a small farm as large capital can
be used on a large farm and with much less risk.
Stable manure is still the favorite article with the masses of
gardeners. One ton of ordinary stable manure contains about 1275
pounds of organic matter, carrying eight pounds of nitrogen, ten
pounds of potash, and four pounds of phosphoric acid.
When thoroughly rotted, the manure acquires a still larger
percentage of plant food; it is more valuable, not only for that
reason, but also on account of its immediate availability. Further,
the mechanical effect of this manure in opening and loosening the
soil, allowing air and warmth to enter more freely, adds greatly to
its value.
It is easily gotten and often goes wholly or in part to waste. On
the outskirts of some towns may be seen a collection of manure piles
that have been hauled out and dumped in waste places. The plant food
in each ton of this manure is worth at least two dollars--that is
the least Eastern farmers pay for similar material, and they make
money doing it. Yet almost every liveryman has to pay some one for
hauling the manure away. This is simply because farmers living near
these towns are missing a chance to secure something for
nothing--because, perhaps, the profit is not directly in sight. But
from most soils there is a handsome profit possible from a very
small application of stable manure.
While writing this, I saw a man in New Rochelle, N. Y.; dumping a
load of street sweepings into a hole in a vacant lot. It would have
been less wasteful to have dumped a bushel of potatoes into the
hole.
Commercial fertilizers are coming more and more in use by market
gardeners, and with reason. If we examine a good fertilizer,
analyzing five per cent available nitrogen, six per cent phosphoric
acid, and 8 per cent potash, we shall find that one ton of it
contains, besides less valuable ingredients: 100 lb. nitrogen, 120
lb. phosphoric acid, 160 lb. potash.
Such fertilizers probably retail at forty to sixty dollars per ton,
and are fully worth it. All this plant food, and perhaps one half
more, can be drawn in a single load, while it will take ten such
loads of stable manure to supply the same amount of plant food.
There is no reason to be afraid of too much fertilizer, provided it
is evenly distributed and thoroughly mixed through properly prepared
soil. Stinginess in this item is poor economy.
Nitrogen is the most essential food for plant growth. It is an
important element of plant food in manure. In ordinary manure most
of the value is due to the nitrogen, although phosphoric acid and
potash are also present. It is found in the most available form in
nitrate of soda. Nitrate of soda will benefit all crops, but it does
not follow that it will pay to use it on all crops. Its cost makes
it unprofitable to use on cheap crops; but on those that yield a
large return nitrate of soda is a very profitable investment.
"It is shown in the experiments conducted with nitrate of soda on
different crops that in the case of grain and forage crops, which
utilized the nitrate quite as completely as the market garden crops,
the increased value of crops due to nitrate does not in any case
exceed $14 per acre, or a money return at the rate of $8.50 per 100
pounds of nitrate used, while in the case of the market-garden crops
the value of the increased yield reaches, in the case of one crop,
the high figure of over $263 per acre, or at the rate of about $66
per 100 pounds of nitrate." (New Jersey Agricultural Experiment
Stations, page 8, No. 172.)
Professor Voorhees, of the same station, experimented with tomatoes,
with these results:
Manure and Fertilizer Used Cost Per Acre Value of Crop
No manure $271.88
30 tons barnyard manure $30.00 291.75
8 tons manure and 400 lb. fertilizer 15.00 317.63
160 pounds nitrate of soda alone 4.00 361.13
Such common crops as tomatoes, cabbage, turnips, beets, etc., in
order to be highly profitable, must be grown and harvested early;
any one can grow them in their regular season; their growth must be
promoted or forced as much as possible, at the time when the natural
agencies are not active in the change of soil nitrogen into
available forms, and the plants must, therefore, be supplied
artificially with the active forms of nitrogen, if a rapid and
continuous growth is to be maintained.
It is quite possible to have a return of $50 per acre from the use
of $5 worth of nitrate of soda on crops of high value, as, for
example, early tomatoes, beets, cabbage, etc. This is an
extraordinary return for the money and labor invested; still, if the
increased value of the crop were but $10, or even $8, it would be a
profitable investment, since no more land and but little additional
capital was required in order to obtain the extra $5 or $8 per acre.
The results of all the experiments conducted in different parts of
the country and in different seasons, show an average gain in yield
of early tomatoes of about fifty per cent, with an average increased
value of crop of about $100 per acre. The rest of the report shows
similar results with other crops. (New Jersey Agricultural
Experiment Station, Bulletin 172.)
Joseph Harris says, "Some years ego we used nitrate of soda
cautiously as a top dressing on the celery plants. The effect was
astonishing. The next year, having more confidence, we spread the
nitrate at the time we sowed the seed, and again after the plant
came up, and twice afterward during a rain.
"Instead of finding it difficult to get the plants early enough for
the celery growers who set them out, they were ready three weeks
before the usual time of transplanting.
"At the four applications, we probably used 1600 lb. of nitrate of
soda per acre, and this would probably furnish more nitric acid to
the plants than they could get from five hundred tons of manure per
acre, provided it had been possible to have worked such a quantity
into the soil. Never were finer plants grown. As compared with the
increased value of the plants, the cost of the nitrate is not worth
taking into consideration."
As a means of fertilization without the use of artificial
fertilizer, soil inoculation has come. It has grown out of the
discovery of the dependence of leguminous plants on bacteria which
live on their roots. The discovery is one of the most important of
those made in modern agriculture.
It has received its greatest impetus in America, under the
experiments of Professor Moore of the United States Agricultural
Department.
The Department supplied free to farmers the bacteria for
inoculation. Now they supply it only for experimental purposes. A
laboratory has been fitted up for the work. The method is to
propagate bacteria for each of the various leguminous plants such as
clover, alfalfa, soy beans, cow peas, tares, and velvet beans. All
of these plants are of incalculable value in different sections of
the country as forage for farm animals. In the West, alfalfa is the
main reliance for stockraisers. The farmers of the East are trying
to establish it, but meet with difficulty chiefly for want of the
special bacteria which should be found on the roots.
The function of these bacteria is to gather the nitrogen of the air
and supply it as plant food. Without the bacteria the plant can get
only the nitrogen which is supplied from the soil in fertilizers.
With the aid of the bacteria the growing plant can derive the
greater part of its food from the air.
Here is one of the results of the use of inoculated seed as reported
by the United States Agricultural Bulletin No. 214.
G. L. Thomas, experimenting with field peas on his farm near Auburn,
Me., made a special test with fertilized and unfertilized strips,
and stated that "inoculated seed did as much without fertilizers of
any kind, as uninoculated seed supplied with fertilizer (phosphate)
at the rate of 800 pounds and a ton of barnyard manure per acre."
This seems to be only in its infancy. The Department warns us that
nitrogen inoculation is useless where the soil already has enough
nitrogen and where other plant foods are absent.
The experiments are most important, and we are probably on the eve
of as great advances in agriculture as in electricity, but the human
race has a great love for "inoculation," and indeed for all
unnatural processes.
You remember the story of the wonderful coon that Chandler Harris
tells? No? They were constantly seeing this enormous coon, but
always just as they almost got their hands on him, he disappeared.
One night the boys came running in to say that the wonderful coon
was up in a persimmon tree in the middle of a ten-acre lot; so they
got the dogs and the lanterns and guns and ran out, and sure enough
they saw the wonderful big coon up in a fork of the tree. It was a
bright moonlight night, but to make doubly sure they cut down the
tree and the dogs ran in--the coon wasn't there.
"Well, but, Uncle Remus," said the little boy, "I thought you said
you saw the coon there."
"So we did, Honey," said the old man, "so we did; but it's very
easy to see what ain't there when you're looking for it."
Another method of increasing fertility at increased expense deserves
notice. The vacant public lands are for the most part desert-like,
and their utilization can come about only through irrigation.
This land can be made to produce the finest crops in the world; and
the tremendous volumes of water that flow from the mountains to the
sea, once harnessed and piped or ditched to this land, will
transform it into beautiful gardens and farms.
With the work being done by the United States Government, and that
of the various states, we may look forward in the not distant future
to this land being made habitable to man.
It is well known that with the dry, even climate and with an
abundance of water applied as vegetation needs, this now arid waste
is far more productive than the Eastern states, where the crops are
at the mercy of the elements, sometimes having too much moisture and
at other times not having enough.
"Irrigation offers control of conditions such as is found nowhere
except in greenhouse culture. The farmer in the humid country cannot
control the amount of starch in potatoes, sugar in beets, protein in
corn, gluten in wheat, except by planting varieties which are
especially adapted to the production of the desired quality. The
irrigation farmer, on the other hand, can produce this or that
desirable quality by the control of the moisture supply to the
plant. He can hasten or retard maturity of the plant, produce early
truck or late truck on the same soil, grow wheat or grow rice as he
deems advisable."
"On the irrigated fields of the Vosges, Vaucluse, etc., in France,
six tons of dry hay becomes the rule, even upon ungrateful soil; and
this means considerably more than the annual food of one milch cow
(which can be taken as a little less than five tons) grown on each
acre."
"The irrigated meadows round Milan are another well known example.
Nearly 22,000 acres are irrigated there with water derived from the
sewers of the city, and they yield crops of from eight to ten tons
of hay as a rule; occasionally some separate meadows will yield the
fabulous amount--fabulous to-day but no longer fabulous
to-morrow--of eighteen tons of hay per acre; that is, the food of
nearly four cows to the acre, and nine times the yield of good
meadows in this country." ("Fields, Factories, and Workshops," pages
116-117.)
"If irrigation pays"--and no one now questions that--"the whole
Western country of rich soil, which asks but a drink now and then,
will be turned into a Garden of Eden." _(Maxwell's Talisman.)_
Agriculture may be revolutionized with the advent of irrigation.
A new method of disposing of sewage and at the same time irrigating
the soil, has come into use recently, and will be found valuable to
those who are situated so that they can make use of it.
The sewage from buildings is drained into a large tank where the
heavier matter can settle to the bottom. When the water rises nearly
to the top of the tank it is siphoned into another tank, and from
there it is piped about the field.
The piping is very simple--ordinary drain tile conveys the water.
Beginning at the highest point of the field to be irrigated, a
six-inch (or larger) line of tile should be laid along the highest
ground with a fall of not over one inch to each ten feet. From this
main trunk should be branch lines of "laterals," laid from eight to
twelve feet apart, as they would be laid for draining a field. These
branch lines may be laid at an angle to the main trunk as may be
most convenient; all the joints must be covered so as to keep out
the flirt. The whole system should be laid deep enough in the ground
to be secure from frost; but to be most effective it should not be
over fourteen to sixteen inches below the surface, hence
sub-irrigation cannot be used very successfully in the Northern
states. In a sandy loam soil with a clay subsoil it works best at
sixteen to twenty-four inches.
This is substantially Colonel Waring's method of sewage disposal. To
get the best use of it for plants, the water should be assembled and
kept in the sun for ten to twelve days, then turned into the pipes
until the ground is well soaked, and then shut off and not allowed
in the pipes again for ten to fifteen days, according to the weather
and condition of moisture in the soil. The crop should be cultivated
between each watering.
However, as Bailey says, "Evidently in all regions in which crops
will yield abundantly without irrigation, as in the East, the main
reliance is to be placed on good tillage."
"Most vegetable gardeners in the East do not find it profitable to
irrigate. Now and then a man who has push and the ability to handle
a fine crop to advantage, finds it a very profitable undertaking."
("Principles of Vegetable Gardening," page 174.) Bailey, however,
was not thinking of "overhead irrigation."
The late J. M. Smith, Green Bay, Wisconsin, was one of the expert
market gardeners of his region. "The longer I live," wrote Mr.
Smith, then in the midst of a serious drought, "the more firmly am I
convinced that plenty of manure and then the most complete system of
cultivation make an almost complete protection against ordinary
droughts." (Same, page 330.)
If the soil is cultivated carefully and intensively, it will hold
water within itself and carry a storage reservoir underneath the
growing crop. Finely pulverizing and packing the seed bed, makes it
retain the greatest possible percentage of the moisture that falls,
just as a tumbler full of fine sponge or of birdshot will retain
many times the amount of water that a tumbler full of buckshot will.
The atmosphere quickly drinks up the moisture from the soil unless
we Prevent it. This we do by means of a soil "blanket," called a
"mulch" This finely pulverized surface largely prevents the
moisture below from evaporating, and at the same time keeps the
surface in such condition that it readily absorbs the dew and the
showers. Water moves in the soil as it does in a lamp wick, by
capillary attraction; the more deeply and densely the soil is
saturated with moisture, the more easily the water moves upward,
just as oil "climbs up" a wet wick faster than it does a dry one.
One can illustrate the effect of this fine soil "mulch" in
preventing evaporation by placing some powdered sugar on a lump of
loaf sugar and putting the lump sugar in water. The powdered sugar
will remain dry even when the lump has become so thoroughly
saturated that it crumbles to pieces.
"We have no useless American acres," said Secretary Wilson. "We
shall make them all productive. We have agricultural explorers in
every far corner of the world; and they are finding crops which have
become so acclimated to dry conditions, similar to our own West,
that we shall in time have plants thriving upon our so-called arid
lands. We shall cover this arid area with plants of various sorts
which will yield hundreds of millions of tons of additional forage
and grains for Western flocks and herds. Our farmers will grow these
upon land now considered practically worthless."
In this way it has been estimated that in the neighborhood of one
hundred million acres of the American desert can be reclaimed to the
most intensive agriculture. (See a study of the possible additions
to available land in Prof. W. S. Thompson's "Population, a Study of
Malthusianism": Col. U, 1915.) Frederick V. Coville, the chief
botanist of the Department of Agriculture, does not hesitate to say
that in the strictly arid regions there are many millions of acres,
now considered worthless for agriculture, which are as certain to be
settled in small farms as were the lands of Illinois.
Land that was thought to be absolute desert has been made to yield
heavy crops of grain and forage by this method without irrigation.
Macaroni wheat will grow with ten inches of rainfall, and yield
fifteen bushels to the acre. This however is less than the average
wheat yield in the United States.
Much can be done by dry farming; that is, by plowing the soil very
deep and cultivating six or eight times a season, thus retaining all
the moisture for the crops and reducing evaporation to a minimum.
There are thousands of acres in different sections of Montana that
grow good crops without irrigation. In Fergus County, for instance,
the wonderful yield of 45 bushels of wheat per acre is grown without
irrigation. Heavy crops of grain and vegetables are grown in the
vicinity of Great Falls by the dry farming system.
The money and time spent in spraying is also well invested. The New
York Agricultural Experiment Station began a ten-year experiment in
potato-spraying to determine how much the yield can be increased by
spraying with Pyrox or with Bordeaux mixture.
In 1904 the gain due to spraying was larger than ever before. Five
sprayings with Bordeaux increased the yield 233 bushels per acre,
while three sprayings increased it 191 bushels. The gain was due
chiefly to the prolongation of growth through the prevention of late
blight. The sprayed potatoes contained one ninth more starch and
were of better quality.
The average increase of profit per acre from spraying potatoes was
figured to be about $22 on each acre. The result was arrived at from
experiment, two thirds of which was by independent farmers.
(Particulars will be found In Bulletin No. 264, issued by the
Department.)
In fourteen farmers' business experiments, including 18 acres of
potatoes, the average gain due to spraying was 62-1/2 bushels per
acre, the average total cost of spraying 93 cents per acre; and the
average net profit, based on the market price of potatoes at digging
time, $24.86 per acre.
"One class of gardeners," Burnet Landreth explains, "may be termed
experimental farmers, men tired of the humdrum rotation of farm
processes and small profits, men looking for a paying
diversification of their agricultural interests. Their expenses for
appliances are not great, as they have already on hand the usual
stock of farm tools, requiring only one or two seed drills, a small
addition to their cultivating implements, and a few tons of
fertilizers. Their laborers and teams are always on hand for the
working of moderate areas. In addition to the usual expense of the
farm, they would not need to have a cash capital of beyond 20 to 25
dollars per acre for the area in truck."
"Other men, purchasing or renting land, especially for market
gardening, taking only improved land of suitable aspect, soil, and
situation, and counting in cost of building, appliances, and labor,
would require a capital of $80 to $100 per acre. For example, a
beginner in market gardening in South Jersey, on a five-acre patch,
would need $500 to set up the business, and run it until his
shipments began to return him money. With the purpose of securing
information on this interesting point, the writer asked for
estimates from market gardeners in different localities, and the
result has been that from Florida the reports of the necessary
capital per acre, in land or its rental (not of labor), fertilizers,
tools, implements, seed and all the appliances, average $95, from
Texas $45, from Illinois $70, from the Norfolk district of Virginia
the reports vary from $75 to $125, according to location, and from
Long Island, New York, the average of estimates at the east end is
$75, and at the west end $150."
I have before me now one of the roseate advertisements, which we so
often see in the newspapers, telling how fortunes can be made by
investing a few dollars in a tropical plantation in Mexico.
It gives what are supposed to be startling yields per acre, and yet
the returns, which must necessarily be taken with considerable
allowance, are only from $580 to $1087 per acre on various
plantations.
There are market gardeners and nurserymen near New York City who are
making their acres produce better returns than this. It is not
necessary to go off into the tropical wilderness seeking a fortune
which is usually a gold brick that some fellow is trying to sell
you, when as good results can be secured right at home.
Market gardeners in and near Philadelphia pay $25 to $50 an acre and
upwards rent for land, and work from five to forty acres. This is as
much as similar land in many parts of the country could be bought
for. But it is not a high rent when they are right at the
market--one man makes the round trip in two and one half
hours--manure costs them nothing--for years they have been using the
excavations from the old style privy wells, which has been hauled to
their farm and deposited where they wished it, free. They have
modern facilities, such as trolley and telephone, and are as much
city men as any clerk in an office. They clear far higher profits
from an acre than the average farmer, raising never less than two,
and often three crops in a season. They employ several men to the
acre, and at certain times many more, working the men in gangs. Only
the difficulty of getting good help at their prices prevents them
from using twice the number.
However, the possibilities of putting capital into land at a profit
are still infinite.
What chiefly attracts the gardener to the great cities is stable
manure; this is not wanted so much for increasing the richness of
the soil--one ninth part of the manure used by the French gardeners
would do for that purpose--but for keeping the soil at a certain
temperature. Early vegetables pay best, and in order to obtain early
produce, not only the air, but the soil as well, must be warmed;
that is done by putting great quantities of properly mixed manure
into the soil; its fermentation heats it. But with the present
development of industrial skill, heating the soil could be done more
economically and more easily by hot-water pipes. Consequently, the
French gardeners begin more and more to make use of portable pipes,
or thermosiphons, provisionally established in the cool frames.
Competition that stands in with the railroads can be met only by
being near the market or having water transportation. Indeed, the
erect of water transportation in getting manure, and in delivering
the produce from the railroads, appears in the early history of
trucking. The railroads often crush out boat competition by
absorbing docks and standing in with the commission men. This could
be met by such cooperative selling agencies as the flower growers
already have.
"One of the earliest centers for the development of truck farming in
its present sense was along the shores of Chesapeake Bay, where fast
sailing oyster boats were employed for sending the produce to the
neighboring markets of Baltimore and Philadelphia. In a similar way
the gardeners about New York early began pushing out along Long
Island, using the waters of the Sound for transporting their
produce. The trucking region on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan
is another sample of the effect of convenient water transportation
in causing an early development of this industry. The building of
the Illinois Central railroad opened up a region in southern
Illinois that was supposed to be particularly adapted to fruit
growing." ("Development of the Trucking Interests," by F. S. Earle,
page 439.)
If one goes into the trucking business on so large a scale as to be
able to make deals with the railroads, such as The Standard Oil
Company has made, of course additional prices could be gotten, owing
to the possibility of putting competitors at a disadvantage. That
business is a large one.
In doing business on this scale, much will depend on your ability as
a merchant.
"It is useless to grow good crops unless they can be sold at a
profit; yet it is safe to say that ten men grow good truck crops for
one who markets them to the best advantage."
Three Acres and Liberty: Ch. XI-XV