YIELDS OF FARM CROPS.
The yields of farm crops in any given locality are influenced by a multitude of factors,— seed, weather, soil preparation and management, care, harvesting, and the like. Any effort, therefore, to tabulate yields of widely grown crops must be considered as suggestive and provisional rather than definite and constant. Yet, when an exten sive area is considered, as a continent, a fairly accurate determination can be arrived at, and the effort will be of value in measuring up the adapta bilities and possibilities of any area for a given crop grown in that region.
In the tables that follow, the average and best yields of the more important field crops of the United States and Canada, as reported by good observers in several parts of the continent, are recorded. In some cases census figures have been available ; in others, the reporter has had to deter mine the yields for his state or province from such figures and estimates as he was able to secure. It
is not improbable, therefore, that some error has been made in certain cases, especially in reporting the best yields. If the best yields, as reported in these tables, have any significance, it is to show what has been accomplished, and, therefore, what can be accomplished again, even though in special cases the best reported yields may seem to be very exceptional. Unfortunately, the aver age yields of all crops are greatly lowered from the average yields attained by successful and painstaking growers by the small yields of the careless and indifferent growers, and the small figures of poor crop years. Hence, no progressive farmer will be satisfied to attain merely the average.