AGRICULTURE IN CALIFORNIA.

Southland Times, Issue 1284, 26 July 1870, Page 3

AGRICULTURE IN CALIFORNIA.

{New Tori Tribune.) , California farmers are beginning to learn that simple wheat-raising is not farming, and. that there is a limit— which has been nearly reached in the longsettled Talleyt— to th| productiveness even of soils which originally produced 50 to 60 bushels of wheat to the acre. Blight and rust have_ been Tery much blamed of late'yeJMs TorctheVfailure of grain in the counties . of Santa Clara, San Mateo, Nupa, Marin, and Sonoma ; , the truth, however, would ftave v laid it-at the door of a system of cultivation which has been unceasing in its demands upon the productiveness of the land, and which has never done anything whatever to restore to it any of those constituents of which each crop despoils it. Ten years of continuous wheat or barley-raising will exhaust the best land anywhere, L . when no restorative is used, and where i. ploughing to the depth of but six inches is practised; and this one crop and no rest system always prevailed l The farmers, in ' the counties named especially, have lately had abundant i warning in short and poor crops,that the > time for such shiftless practices has ; passed away. The average wheat yield ; is officially set down at 20 bushels per ; acre; but, in localities where the land has i been cultivated ten years, it is not more than 15. With a wantonness which cannot be too strongly deprecated, and with i an indolence which prevails nowhere else, 5 and which brings its own punishment, in the general and present threatened star- > vation of cattle in years of drought, the s Californian farmer burns the straw off his fields as soon as he cuts the crop of wheat F off it. This custom has been partially dropped of. late, but it is still much too i commonly practised. I The New England, fanner, in addition I to his chief business — say of grain pros duction.— raises his own pork, poultry, . and beef, and makes bis own butter, soap, r and many other household necessities. , These details of his business the California b farmer is frequently—indeed is generally 1 —above, and he is consequently a large customer at the village grocery, which he ought to and would be almost independent of but for his own' mismanagement. In times past the California farmer— like -. his even more reckless brother, the miner q —could perhaps afford to disregard those

r rules of economy- and" thrift whicn ar« s followed in other St»teß, but for which 1 ' living, let alone profit, would be impossible, to many of the ' feiroMrt.of a ,t>ba i Atlantic border.^^ theTirgiii nifli- , ness of much of the land, like the^^«rly > richness, of moit of the gold pladen^jbM ; been skimmed in the old dtitri«ct», L and it is high time ti»t £hen«jr7T«tf the deeper ploughihgi " rotatipn of cropa, v*ttention ••.- to ; fcrttHfl^tion, ■"••• and the production on the ftrin of , nearly erery requisite of the farmer, Wer« attended to. Thrift, economy, and intel- . ligent cultiration may render •jrejft ;5 Ui» • poorest land fruitful, and ite cultiratapa , profitable ; while their opposite* oan^uiti certainly make the rery ndtest^farmiiial ; productive. Many thousands 6t irap?^ , land in Calif ornia, eipecially in the soutliern and south-eastern eooutiei, W«M taken up last year by specalators or by those who wished to engage in the bust* ness of sheep^raisihg. It if satlsfactojrjt to know that the speculators ha-ra 'aq( found customers at their advanced *^M» f and that, in company with' the Ssa IVancisco real-estatdbubble-blowers,^he^hatfl| come to grief. California is |not r i^|lp|^ disc, despite ite msgninoent : dJßaaS r ox the fertility of its soiL It is a Btato where hard work and eeonoi&y are «• well rewarded as in «y part of th» : worldV ;■■" ' „.'. ' :'[■' " .. -y :;. : y : v'V.V