80 The Bulletin. 



with the profit in live stock growing. The world asks for and is willing to pay 

 twice as much for the same number of pounds, of the kind of animal it wants. 

 When a certain amount of pasture will produce just about the same number of 

 pounds of one sort as it will of another cheaper sort, it is just good business sense 

 to feed the pasture to the better animal. This is plain, isn't it? 



We are all agreed that North Carolina soils must be improved, so we can make 

 more pounds of product with the same or less amount of labor than is being used 

 to-day. The many leguminous plants that the soils of our State will produce 

 will — because of their nitrogen gathering habit and humus producing capacity — 

 become our greatest soil improvers. These plants can not be produced and used 

 the most profitably without live stock, as with live stock we may secure both the 

 manurial and stock food values, the latter amounting to around nine dollars per 

 ton for each ton of dry hay produced. This hay may, by the use of the best 

 harvesting tools, be housed at about $1.00 per ton in North Carolina (we have 

 harvested many hvmdreds of tons at that figure or less), and if the manure be 

 carefully handled fully 75 per cent of the plant food value may be retained to 

 enrich the soil, after the animals have secured the food value. And the high-class, 

 high-priced animal pays the double profit here the same as in the use of the 

 pasture, no more pea hay being- required to produce a pound of six-cent beef than 

 is required to produce a like amount of three-cent. Another point in favor of 

 harvesting the legumes instead of plowing them under for manure direct is, that 

 when land is of imeven fertility when the plants are returned to the soil direct 

 a large amount of the product is returned to the rich spots which are already 

 productive, while the poor spots that produce little receive little in return, while 

 if the whole product of the field is made into manure the fertilizer can be applied 

 upon the parts of the field where most needed, in such quantities as may be 

 thought most profitable. A troublesome labor problem is becoming more acute in 

 our State, and the farmer is not without his share of this. The keeping of live 

 stock in many ways tends to mitigate this trouble. The third or half of the live 

 stock farm acreage devoted to pasture requires practically no expense for labor in 

 harvesting the crop. Other large areas of the farm devoted to hays for winter feed 

 for stock may be harvested by machinery rapidly at small expense. In certain 

 sections of the State varieties of hays may be grown that occupy the land for 

 several years in succession, thus eliminating the expense of planting the land 

 each year. This reduces the labor bill again. By having these stock food crop? 

 come in succession, the labor of harvesting may be distributed over several weeks, 

 thus keeping a less number of hands more regularly employed. And by having the 

 live stock to feed and care for, profitable work is provided for the winter months, 

 establishing on the farm the same twelve-months working season that is found 

 necessary to make other businesses the most profitable. By careful business 

 methods and good judgment, a larger amount of wealth may be produced per hand 

 on the North Carolina farm handling live stock than can be produced on farms 

 of the West. We are told that a hand in Iowa averages around $000 per year. 

 The average in North Carolina is under $400. The writer knows of farms in our 

 State that are averaging more than $1,000 per hand per year where live stock is 

 the principal business. We admit that it requires a higher degree of intelligence 

 to make live stock growing successful than is required to grow seed crops, but we 

 have all got to come to putting more brains into our business, any way, so this is 

 really no argument against the growing and feeding of good live stock. It means 

 great things to our State, so is it not time we were about it? 



LITE STOCK. 



JOHN W. ROBINSON. 



In riding over our section of the country you generally see land that has been 

 cleared, all timber cut and put on the market, and in its place pine bushes and 

 galled places ribbed with gullies. Our streams are filled with soil from the hill 

 sides, thus making our bottom land almost worthless. 



