404 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



1909. He brought a herd of dairy cows with him from Iowa 

 and established himself as a dairy farmer. The first year his 

 corn yielded twenty bushels to the acre. The hay was prac- 

 tically a failure. He saved the manure and carefully put it on 

 the soil, and in three years he had more than doubled the yield 

 of corn and the land was producing over a ton of clover hay 

 to the acre. This is excellent when we, consider that the farm 

 had been mistreated by continuous grain farming for more than 

 twenty years previous to his buying it. 



The value of the dairy cow does not include merely her 

 relation to the soil fertility. The income from her produce is, 

 of course, the principal factor by which her values must be 

 determined. It has already been pointed out what an enormous 

 income is produced by her in Denmark from an area less than 

 one-fourth that of Iowa. Switzerland furnishes another example. 

 That part of Switzerland not covered with rocks and glaciers 

 is about equal in area to eighteen average Missouri counties. 

 The land is not as adaptable to farming as is our Missouri 

 Ozark region. Switzerland has a population almost as large 

 as that of Missouri. There are not quite 800,000 dairy cows 

 in Switzerland, which is less than the number of dairy cows in 

 Missouri. These cows supply the entire population of the 

 country, and in addition $26,000,000 worth of products are 

 exported annually. Were our Missouri Ozark counties, or any 

 other section of the southwest of equal area, to take up dairying 

 as they have done in Switzerland, it would mean that $2,500,000 

 would be distributed annually in each county of that section. 



We have many sections of America where the value of the 

 cow has been clearly demonstrated. Twenty years ago Wisconsin 

 was hardly on the map, agriculturally speaking, and now it 

 produces more butter than any state in the union. In our 

 own State of Missouri we have communities where the effect 

 of dairy farming is already being strongly felt. At Macon, 

 Mo., a creamery distributes about $90,000 annually to the 

 farmers within driving distance of the town. A prominent 

 banker has said that since the farmers have taken up dairying 

 their financial condition has been immeasurably bettered, debts 

 have been cleared and bank accounts established, and he further- 

 more states that so far as he can see it is all clear gain over their 

 income previous to the time when they took up dairying. 



Three years ago when a creamery was established at 

 Mountain Grove, Mo., the amount of cream produced was 



