Getting widespread use of improved varieties of crops
1948
Beard, D.F.
I would like to point out again the role played by corn hybrids in educating the farming public of the possibilities of plant breeding. The value of better germ plasm is as much appreciated by crops producers as it is by the producers of livestock. The prestige of the experiment stations and the crop improvement associations has greatly increased during the past few years. Their stamp of approval on a new variety is accepted almost without question by a majority of farmers. In contrast to the situation 20 to 30 years ago when a farmer would skeptically ask for a few pecks of seed of a new variety to try out, he is now willing to gamble the entire acreage of any crop he grows on a new variety recommended by the experiment station, extension service, and crop improvement association. Selling a new variety is now little more than a job of giving the public accurate information about it. Systems of building up and disseminating the scarce seed supplies the early years of distribution of new grain varieties are evolving satisfactorily. Succeeding equally well with the small-seeded legumes grasses is the big job ahead. Once the seed supply of a new variety becomes ample, widespread will come in proportion to the number of seed sources accessible to farmer so that he will find it as easy, or a little easier, to get seed of the new variety as it is to plant the old.
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