The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., July 01, 1925, Page 15, Image 15

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JULY 1925
Page Fifteen
THE UNITED AMERICAN
Diversified Farming Brings Prosperity to North Dakota Farmers
A New Farming Era is Dawning Over the Prairie State Since the Tillers of the Soil have Leameid that the
One-Crop Plan, with its Many Risks, Can be Abandoned in Favor of a More Modern System of Farming
Frank Ridgway, in the “Chicago Tribune”
DY BREAKING up the bonanza farms into smaller
units and going head over heels into the produc­
tion of their own bacon, butter, beans and biscuits,
North Dakota farmers are recovering from the crash in
this state a few years ago. While North Dakota was
probably hit the hardest of any state in the country
during the period of depression following the war,
John Lee Coulter, president of the agricultural college
at Fargo, declares that the general adoption of a diversi­
fied system of agriculture during the last five years
has made it possible for the farmers to go faster and
farther toward recovery than any of the other states.
When wheat took a tumble a few years ago, throw­
ing hundreds into bankruptcy, North Dakota farmers
came to a sudden realization that their one crop system
of farming—growing wheat almost exclusively—had
to be changed. At that time they ate out of country
stores, depending little upon their farms to produce
the family supply of vegetables, fruits, bacon, and
dairy products. Surveys, showed that the bill for
dry groceries including pepper, salt, sugar tea, and
coffee, was insignificant compared with the rest of
the supplies that go on the family table, and that the
bulk of the load could be produced at home.
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*
*
Leaders of the new movement pointed out that
farmers could certainly produce most of their own
vegetables, eggs, poultry and butter, and a campaign
was started to bring this about, so that they could
save at least $300 or $400 a year and have a living,
even if the wheat and flax crops failed.
Drive into almost any section of the state today,
and find it a common thing on farms once devoted
exclusively to wheat growing for a farmer to have a
garden with all the common varieties of vegetables,
a flock of chickens, a drove of hogs, a few cows, a
flock of sheep, and the necessary field crops—corn,
barley, oats, alfalfa, and sweet clover—to feed them.
They are rapidly adopting the slogan, “Grow your
own.”
Today there is a general tendency in North Dakota
to cut down on the bread crops and to increase the
acreages of barley and oats. Along with this is an
enormous increase in the population of sheep, hogs,
dairy cattle, and chickens. In this way farmers are
helping to bring about a better balance between the
production and consumption of wheat. North Dakota
growers have done their share in reducing the produc­
tion of wheat from 76,000,000 acres in 1919 to an
estimated acreage this year of less than 54,000,000 in
the United States.
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Mr. Coulter, who sponsored the diversification
program, says, “Of course, we had to go outside for
help, because farmers had no money with which to buy
foundation stock. Most of them had to have money
not only for dairy cows, hogs, and sheep, but for
building and fencing materials, and it all had to come
from outside the state. But where were we to get the
money? Banks in this state had failed; the federal
reserve banks and the federal farm loan banks officials
said they were reducing, not expanding, and the war
finance corporation officials said the war was over and
they could not help us.”
Finally Mr. Coulter appealed to President Coolidge
and other officials at Washington, D. C., and with their
moral support the agricultural credit corporation,
headed by C. T. Jaffrey, with headquarters at Minne­
apolis, Minn., was launched with $10,000,000 paid
up capital. It was this money shipped to the north­
west by eastern and mid-western financial interests
that made it possible for North Dakota to get back
on its feet. The money was lent to farmers for one,
two, and three years on hogs and sheep and for five
years on dairy cattle, at 6 per cent interest rate, The
farmer’s personal note and a mortgage on the live
stock was all the collateral required.
With this money, North Dakota farmers brought
in more than 35,000 head of breeding ewes last fall,
and if orders had been in before the season closed,
more than double that number of sheep would have
been bought. Practically all of them came from
Montana and Idaho ranches at $11 a head, using about
$400,000. So far the credit corporation has not lost
a dollar; the first wool clip was sufficient to meet the
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