268 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



parent falling off in yield is due largely to the fact that they are 

 now counting their yield by the bushel of grain instead of by the 

 bushel of ears. 



But where the increase has fallen off most largely is in the rich 

 valleys of the Scioto, the Muskingum and the Miamis — regions 

 where farmers have grown corn year after year on the same lands 

 for fifty to seventy-five years, or longer, and where they say their 

 yields are as large as ever. The statistics show, however, that they 

 are mistaken. All this means that these farmers are neglecting 

 the keeping of live stock and the careful handling of manure, but 

 are attempting to replace that natural source of fertility with com- 

 mercial fertilizers, and the soil is losing its fertility. When I talk 

 on this subject in Ohio our farmers answer by saying that they can 

 not keep stock enough to furnish the manure necessary to maintain 

 the fertility of their lands. But their fathers did keep enough. 



I have shown on chart VI the history of cereal production and 

 the live stock industry in Great Britain. The British people did 

 not begin keeping statistics of crop production until about 1865, but 

 there are statistics of the yield of wheat per acre which go back 

 beyond that period. Sir John B. Lawes, the founder of the Rotham- 

 sted Experiment Station, estim.ated that in 1850, when he was be- 

 ginning his work, the annual yield of wheat in Great Britain was 

 281/4 bushels per acre — a yield to which it had been brought by the 

 use of animal manure. Sir John B. Lawes was himself the first per- 

 son to engage extensively in the manufacture of artificial fertiliz- 

 ers. His investigations led to the establishment of the great Roth- 

 amsted Experiment Station in 1843. 



The cultivated area in Great Britain at that time was nearly 

 thirteen million acres. It rose in 1870 to a little above that point. 

 From that period up to the present time it has steadily fallen, until 

 there is now in cultivation only ten million acres. The British 

 farmers raise no corn, but grow wheat, oats, barley and forage 

 crops. They had in 1865 a live stock population equivalent to a 

 little more than seven million cattle. They have steadily increased 

 that population until they have now the equivalent of nearly ten 

 million cattle in that country. 



You have a larger amount of waste land in Missouri than we 

 have in Ohio, so the actual population does not vary much between 

 the two States. 



Great Britain, the center of the world's agricultural in- 

 dustry, where land is higher in price than any other agricultural 

 land in the world, is keeping today fifty per cent more cattle and 



