Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture, 1885
(Norman J. Coleman)
Excerpts from the "Report of the Statistician" (J.R. Dodge) , pages 391-394
"The Money Value of Scientific Agriculture"
"Agriculture involves all physical science. Earth, air, light, heat, and moisture are ever factors in vegetable germination and growth. Natural laws direct and control the operations of the husbandman, however ignorant, and his practice, if wise and judicious, is an unconscious formula of the results of science applied to agriculture. Thus we find in every rural community, however primitive and unlettered, peculiar methods and traditionary practices, which are crystallized common sense and unwritten science.
"There is a vast difference, however, between the unconscious science of the untaught farmer and the highest application of the latest discoveries of natural laws, and that distance will be greatly extended in the future.
"Experiments in vegetable physiology and the increase of production by enlarging the natural supply of mineral constituents are questionings of nature suggested by the latest scientific development, the answers to which may lead the way to higher production at lower cost.
"This brings to view the idea of my theme - that there is money in experiment, in high culture, in scientific agriculture. As profit is a prime aim in agriculture, next to the necessity of subsistence, it is important to show the superior value of the highest learning and skill in practice over the lowest type of primitive cultivation.
"Statistical research shows that a crude agriculture is not abundant in product, that it is deficient in working capital, and that it is compelled to pay high interest on borrowed money. A low grade of farming is cursed with mortgages and mildews, with insects and ignorance. Uncertainty broods over its harvests, and famine decimates its people. Famine is unknown in a country of advanced agriculture, though a fourth of its people only may be engaged in rural production. On the contrary, millions famish in India, while most of its people are in agriculture. …
"The failure is unequally distributed. The few advanced farmers grow nearly full crops, and receive larger revenues than usual; the many unskilled and careless suffer disastrous reduction of yield and quality, and fail to make return for seed and labor. Given unscientific agriculture, with an inauspicious season, and the poor may grow poorer, while the scientific farmer in the same year may grow richer.
"What is needed then? Evidently experiment in collecting new plants, in producing new varieties by scientific process, in cheapening the cost of cultivation to compete with foreign production by cheap labor. It will not do to say that, having learned how to compete with the world in certain products that are very cheap, we can never learn to compete in the matter of products that are dear. In our desire for speed, for large results by labor-saving machinery, we must not fall into routine, and decline investigation, inventive research, and experimental effort. Thought in agriculture must be alert and practical, as in mechanical and constructive industries in this era of mental activity.
"Our agriculture is too much controlled by accident and caprice. Free prairie lands, improved reapers, and railroad extension make a glut in wheat. The cotton-gin, slavery, and a strong foreign demand once made the South poor in buying supplies for man and beast engaged in growing cotton. This unequal development reduces profits. While one-third of the wheat is exported, one-seventh of the consumption of barley is imported. We do not grow even the cereals required."
He then explains the sugar production problems in the United states that causes our reliance on imports. Farmers in many areas do not produce cane or beets in enough quantity for efficient manufacture. The federal government experiments in these areas, but he suggests prosperous farmers share the risk and experiment in a spirit of advancing the public welfare.
"Among the results due to applied science in the work of agriculture
the following are prominent:
1) Fertility is increased; the rate of yield is greatly enlarged; labor islightened;
the laborer is less a 'beast of burden' and more a master of machinery.
2) The margin of profit is increased, or rather, one appears where none before
existed.
3) Production is equalized - there are fewer gluts of certain products, and
greater variety in production.
4) Disasters of primitive agriculture are partially averted - drought by deep
and thorough culture, excessive rainfall by drainage; insects are less numerous
with rotation, and their injuries are outgrown by vigor of vitality and strength
of growth; blights and other maladies of vegetable physiology are avoided
by amelioration of the soil and cultivation in harmony with the conditions
of healthy growth.
"Finally, by application of the discoveries of science, the farmer unites brain with brawn in rural production, labor loses its drudgery and acquires effectiveness, the profit and pleasure of agriculture are advanced, the public wealth and welfare are promoted, and a country life, whatever its previous charms, is far better worth the living."