272 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



tons ; that is, he would have manure enough to bring him in eight 

 bushels to the acre of corn more than he is now getting, four more 

 of wheat, and nearly 700 pounds more of hay. In other words, his 

 present yield of corn, which is thirty-five bushels per acre, would 

 be raised to- forty-three ; his wheat yield would be increased from 

 14 to 18 bushels, and his hay yield would be brought up to nearly a 

 ton and a half per acre. The annual value of the produce of each of 

 the 275,000 farms in Ohio would be increased by $100.00, an in- 

 crease amounting to twenty-seven million dollars for the State as a 

 whole. 



I estimate that our farmers are now paying out something like 

 two million dollars a year in the purchase of commercial fertilizers. 

 And while they are paying out this enormous sum for these fer- 

 tilizers, they are washing into the Ohio river, and thence to the cot- 

 ton fields of the South, to the extent of ten or fifteen million dollars 

 annually, the valuable waste product from their barnyards, and are 

 thus losing a possible increase in the production of their farms to 

 the value of fifteen or twenty million dollars more. This gigantic 

 waste is wholly unnecessary and inexcusable. Its prevention 

 would require only the intelligent exercise of a little more care and 

 skill. 



I do not forget the fact that farm labor is becoming more and 

 more an unsolved problem all over our country perhaps more so 

 with us than with you; but as Professor Smith has shown us, I 

 doubt whether in the long run the keeping of live stock is not a 

 saving of labor instead of an operation involving greater labor. 

 You can harvest your crops with less money if they go through 

 your feed lots than if they go through the elevators, and live stock 

 husbandry means the distribution of labor over the entire year, as 

 against its concentration during the summer months. It seems to 

 me, farmers — and I am one of you, and know what it is to feed live 

 stock on the small farm — it seems to me that in this question of the 

 intelligent handling of live stock and the careful saving of manure 

 lies the only road to successful agriculture in all this broad land of 

 ours. 



WHAT CLASS OF HORSES SHALL WE BREED? 



(E, A. Trowbridge, Assistant In Animal Husbandry, Missouri Agriculture Collage.) 



The range of prices for good horses and mules during the past 

 few years is gradually bringing a realization of the vast importance 

 of this industry to not only the people of Missouri but to all the 



