WAUPACA REPUBLICAN

September 6, 1895

 

POTATO NOW IS KING

 

Farmers Beginning to Realize that There is Money in Tubers

 

            The potato has at last taken rank as king among the tillers of the soil.  For years Secretary of Agriculture Morton has been appealing to the farmers of the United States to grow potatoes, as he believed that they would be their salvation.  They have finally taken his advice, and now they are beginning to realize that they will profit by planting more ground to the tubers instead of wheat and corn.  There is at all times a steady demand for them, and they are quite as staple as wheat and not subject to the fluctuations of the latter.  With the low price of wheat and corn the farmers have looked about for some more profitable crop and investigation shows that the United States has never produced enough potatoes for home consumption.  Thousands of bushels are bought in foreign markets every year and if there is a profit for powers abroad, with small areas to devote to the crop and the additional expense of ocean freight rates, there ought to be money in the business for the farmers in this country, who have larger tracts of land and cheaper freight rates.  The imports for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1894, were 3,022,578 bushels, of the value of nearly $1,250,000.

            Last year 2,737,973 acres were devoted to this crop, and that was an increase over the year before of 83,000 acres. The product of 1894, on account of an unfavorable season, was 2,246,000 bushels short of the year before, notwithstanding the increased acreage.  But in measuring the popularity of the potato as an article of farm product, the product is scarcely worthy of consideration, for the increase in the area of land devoted to the crop is plainly the index of its popularity.  All the evidence available indicates that there are now 3,000,000 acres of potatoes growing in the United States.  The fact that there has been a steadily decreasing acreage of wheat, rye, barley, oats and corn, which continues this year, is considered by the Secretary of Agriculture to indicate an increased acreage of potatoes and other substantial small products.

            New York has steadily led all the other States as a potato producer.  Last year 378,728 acres of land were devoted to the crop in New York, and the product, aggregating over 29,000,000 bushels was sold for half as many million dollars.  Michigan was second, with 215,270 acres and a product of over 13,000,000 bushels, which brought the growers nearly $6,000,000.  Pennsylvania was third, with 206,879 acres, which produced almost the exact number of bushels produced by Michigan, though the acreage was vastly less than Michigan’s.  The acreage in Ohio was in round numbers the same as that in Pennsylvania, and the aggregate of the crop was the same within a few thousand bushels, showing that both Pennsylvania and Ohio raised a larger crop than Michigan with less acreage.  The other big potatoe-growing States are Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas, in the order named.  Iowa had 176,605 acres last year; Kansas, 108,213.  The aggregate of acreage gradually decreases from Iowa to Kansas, excepting that Illinois and Wisconsin had almost he same acreage - that is, about 166,500.  While Missouri, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia, Kentucky, South Dakota, Colorado, and a half-dozen other States are good potato growers and have a large acreage, none of them approached 100,000 acres last year, and in nearly all of them less than 50,000 acres of land was devoted to potatoes.