Crops. Bushels.
Wheat 35,000,000
Oats 20,000,000
Corn 12,000,000
Barley 3,000,000
Potatoes 3,000,000
----------
Total 73,000,000
Or 24-1/3 bushels to every acre under cultivation. But the average is
much higher than this, for in the above table no account is taken of the
gardens and large breadth of flax under cultivation.
The official report, when published, may differ slightly with the above,
but not to an extent to make any alteration necessary.
We are informed that, in several instances, land giving wheat for the
last twenty years, without being fertilized or manured, produced in 1877
over twenty bushels of wheat to the acre; a fact creditable to the land,
but very discreditable to the farmers engaged in such _land murder_.
While Minnesota has, without dispute, established her reputation as a
great wheat producer, and the dangers which always lie in wait for the
growing crops are perhaps less here than in most of the other western
States, still it must not be supposed that we can expect to be always
free from them. If we had any such idea it would have been dispelled by
our experience the past season. Never since the State was organized was
there a finer prospect of a magnificent wheat yield than we had during
the months of May, June and the first half of July, 1878. It was not
that the general crop was good, but one could not, in a day's travel,
find one poor looking field; but just as the wheat was within a few days
of being fit to cut, a fierce, hot sun, lasting a week or so, came and
wilted up the grain, so that the crop lost materially in quality, weight
and measure.
Yet this evil had its compensating good. Our corn and potato crops were
very fine, so that our farmers have learned a lesson in the value of
having diversity of crops as a leading feature in their farming system,
and be it remembered that without system there is no successful farming.
The following statement is taken from the immigration pamphlet, issued
by the Minnesota Board of Immigration for 1878: