AGRICULTURE Farm products.—The variety of Illinois farm products is indicated by the following list of crops reported in the United States Census of 1910: Cereals: corn, oats, Wheat, emmer and spelt, barley, buckwheat, rye, kafir corn, and milo maize.
Other grains and seeds: beans, peas, peanuts, broom corn seed, flaxseed, sorghum cane seed, alfalfa seed, millet seed, other tame grass seeds, flower and garden seeds.
Hay and forage: timothy alone, clover alone, timothy and clover mixed, alfalfa, millet, other tame or cultivated grasses, wild, or prairie grasses, grains cut green, coarse forage, root forage.
Other crops: potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams, other vegetables, tobacco, broom corn, flowers and plants, nursery products.
Small fruits: strawberries, blackberries and dewberries, raspberries and loganberries, currants, gooseberries, cranberries.
Orchard fruits: apples, peaches and nectarines, pears, plums and prunes, cherries, apricots, quinces, mulberries.
Grapes.
Nuts: Persian or English walnuts, pecans, black walnuts, butternuts, chestnuts, hickory nuts.
Sub-tropical fruits: figs, Japanese persimmons.
Sugar crops: maple sugar, maple sirup, sugar beets, sorghum cane, sorghum sirup.
Forest products of farms: firewood, fencing material, logs, railroad ties, poles, standing timber sold.
Facts of agriculture.—The accompanying table gives significant figures with reference to Illinois as an agricultural state.
While the corn crop of 1917 exceeded that of 1909 by only 28,000,000 bushels, or 7 per cent, its value exceeded that of 1909 by $201,000,000, or 130 per cent. The yield of oats also exceeded the yield of 1909, but there was a decrease in the yield of wheat and hay and forage. Thus while the total acreage and total yield of crops for 1917 differed but little from those of 1909, these four crops alone had a value of $374,000,000 greater than the value of all crops for 1909. 'Thus with but slightly increased yields the value of farm crops was more than doubled by war conditions.
Four leading crops.—Corn, oats, and wheat are the only cereals grown on a large scale in Illinois. These three cereal
crops with hay and forage produce nine-tenths of the value of all crops in the state, and they occupy a still larger proportion of the area devoted to crops. The methods employed in raising and harvesting these staple crops make it possible for Illinois farmers to produce large values per man. All of these four crops are grown in every county of the state, but each crop has its areas of largest production determined by various factors among which are soil, climate, land relief, and markets.
Corn.—Corn thrives best in well-drained, deep, warm, black loam with an abundance of organic matter. The most favor able climatic conditions for corn are an average summer temperature (Jure, July, and August) of about 75° F. with warm nights as well as warm days, and an average rainfall during the same period of S inches or more, well distributed through the three months. Illinois with its average summer temperature of 70° to 77° and its average summer rainfall of about 11 inches for all parts of the state thus provides the ideal climatic conditions for this crop. While corn is grown in every county of Illinois, it is raised most largely in the central and east-central parts of the state on the rich, black foams of the Wisconsin glaciation. The region of heavy corn production is almost coincident with the region of highest land values of the state, $125 or more per acre, according to the census of 1910.
Illinois summer tem peratures are always favorable to growth of corn, while the amount and distribution of rain fall is not uniformly favorable.
There is sufficient rainfall almost every year to produce maximum crops. The diffi culty is with its distribution.
- The injury resulting from the irregularity in the distribution of the rainfall may he prevented to some extent by drainage, tillage, increasing and maintaining the organic matter of soils, and keeping the soils well supplied with plant food.