114 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



a position to take up the rational method of studying the cost of 

 farm products. Whenever we sell a bushel of grain, a load of hay, 

 or a pound of flesh from our farm, a certain amount of fertility 

 has been removed; and under present conditions, so far as we are 

 concerned, it is gone forever. But for agriculture to become per- 

 manent, this fertility must be returned in some form or other; but 

 in whatever form, a considerable part of it at least must be bought 

 directly or indirectly with money. So that, in view of this fact, 

 I feel compelled to put the fertilizer question upon a cash basis; 

 and in my calculations I have used the prices the farmer has to 

 pay in the open market. 



Now, it must be remembered, that there always has been, and 

 always will be, a large amount of grain and feed sold directly from 

 the farm. The advice we so often see in agricultural papers and 

 bulletins to the effect that we should feed our grain and hay and 

 sell only live stock from the farm, is based upon the theory, I sup- 

 pose, that the genus homo is a purely carnivorous animal; but 

 modern research has confirmed the ancient suspicion that the 

 human organism needs both bread and beef, mush and mutton, 

 pork and pie! 



I have prepared a table showing in detail my method of cal- 

 culating the cost of four staple products of the farm — corn, oats, 

 wheat, and timothy hay. I should like to invite your attention to 

 it for a few minutes, and earnestly request a careful study of it 

 both as to method and as to results. Now, as I have intimated 

 before, I do not claim that the figures on this chart represent abso- 

 lute accuracy. I have been unable to find satisfactorily reliable 

 data upon the matter of soil fertility removed by these crops; and 

 ib is barely possible that the figures I have used are a little high 

 in some instances, but as there is always more or less fertility 

 unavoidably lost beside that taken up by the crop, I have thought 

 these figures may approximate the truth in actual practice. For 

 instance, an experiment (reported in Farmers' Bulletin No. 78) 

 in continuous wheat culture showed a loss of soil nitrogen of over 

 five times that removed by the crop itself. 



I have looked up the average yield of Missouri crops in the 

 Year Book of Agriculture, 1906, and have used a ten-year average 

 both for prices and for yields. I have put the price of average 

 Missouri land, that is, the part that is tillable, at $50 per acre, 

 which I believe to be reasonable enough with improvements in- 

 cluded. I have made my calculations on a basis of one acre. For 

 the prices of fertilizers, I have used 5 cents per lb. for both potash 



