The Wheat Trap: Is Colfax Over-reliant on One Crop?
Local boosters worry that low wheat prices are driving farmers to the wall and suggest a shift toward mixed agriculture.
The story, cleaned up
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When cattle, sheep, hogs, pork, bacon, lard, cheese, apples, eggs, and poultry can all be produced so easily in the Palouse country, it is a wonder that wheat is not going out of style or more wheat fed at home. A town that has the backing of such good farmers as Uniontown should have grown and possess twice the people it has today since the town was started. All wheat raising will eventually drive every man to the wall, for by the time he has all the machinery needed to farm and his horses, and has to pay a big price for his harvest hands, what has the farmer left for himself with wheat at 35 cents? We ought to have a flour mill and creamery to help consume what we have in abundance. No political party can help to raise the price of wheat, but it must be admitted that protection has started up the factories that were idle in 1893-1894, and thousands of men have work today who were idle then. It is only wheat that is too cheap. If it costs too much to raise for profit, let us go into breeding good horses, raise hay, feed, and cattle.
“All wheat raising will eventually drive every man to the wall.”
The Palouse region's historical reliance on monoculture wheat remains a central tension in regional economics today. Balancing industrial efficiency with economic diversity is a struggle that mirrors the transition from the boom-and-bust cycle of the 1890s to modern sustainable agriculture.
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