The Northwest Corn Revolution
Railroad experts prove that Washington’s climate can sustain record-breaking corn yields.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
One of the most remarkable lines of development in agriculture in the Pacific Northwest during the past three years has been the production of corn. Owing to the fact that the climate is radically different from those sections where farmers have made a specialty of corn growing, an erroneous impression prevailed that corn could not be successfully grown here. To correct this, the Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Co. set itself the task to show farmers they could grow corn as well here as in the East. Its agriculturist, C. L. Smith, demonstrated that if seed is carefully selected each year, it soon adapts to the climate and becomes more productive than the parent stock. Growers in the Yakima Valley who have given careful attention to seed selection are now producing two or three times as much as farmers in the Mississippi Valley. The acreage of corn is now doubling each year, and hundreds of silos have been built during 1914.
“It is a matter of record that those growers in the Yakima valley who have given careful attention to seed selection are now producing two or three times as much as are the farmers in the Mississippi Valley.”
This article highlights an era when the state was actively rebranding itself as an agricultural powerhouse. The shift from an 'erroneous impression' to massive production illustrates how early 20th-century economic boosters effectively used agricultural science and corporate intervention to diversify the regional economy.
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