320 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



shoes would analyze, but are not good for feed. If you permit your 

 timothy hay to ripen you bind up the nutriment in it so the cow cannot 

 use it. 



Q. If we sow clover are we going to exhaust our land? 



A. There are no plants grown that are so beneficial to our soils as 

 the legumes, and under that head comes not only the clovers, the enor- 

 mous alfalfa, mammoth clover, but vetches, cow peas and a great many 

 other plants that I do not now recall. How did you get that idea? 

 It is this way, whenever you grow clover and sell it from your soil, it 

 will exhaust the soil very rapidly. You are drawing on your bank 

 account much more rapidly by growing clover to sell than timothy hay. 

 Why ? Because it contains a larger amount of protein, and that is made 

 from nitrogen. Let us see if there is not a check manner of handling it 

 so as to yield not only a crop, but add fertility to our soil. Grcnving on 

 the roots of the clover plant are little bacteria — living organisms — little 

 beings that live and grow the same as animals develop whose function 

 is to gather the nitrogen from the air. There are 12 pounds of nitrogen 

 in the air for each square inch of earth surface. Think of the amount 

 of nitrogen in the air! We have growing on the roots of the clover 

 plant a germ that takes the nitrogen from the air and deposits it on our 

 soil. If you buy the nitrogen — the most important element of plant food, 

 without which you cannot grow a spear of grass or anything else — on 

 the market you pay fifteen cents a pound for it, and yet by the growing 

 of the clover plant, grazing live stock upon it and putting the clover 

 back upon the land again, you can grow it without any exhaustion to 

 the land whatever. If you grow it for the nitrogen and make no use of 

 the clover plant, it will cost you i>4 cents a pound to get the nitrogen 

 from the air as against 15 cents a pound if you buy it on the market, but 

 your clover fed to live stock will be more valuable. It is a poor farmer 

 that will take the clover from his land and sell it. He is no better 

 financier than the person who keeps checking out his bank account and 

 putting nothing in. That is exactly what many farmers are doing. 

 When you sell 500 pounds of butter, which is equivalent to 100 bushels of 

 corn, you are selling from your land fifteen cents worth of fertility; 

 butter is nothing more than condensed sunshine. If you sell 500 pounds 

 of whole milk, you are selling eighteen dollars worth of fertility. It 

 behooves you to get a fair price for it because skim milk has a value as 

 a fertilizer for your calves and for your land, and by the use of it you 

 are depositing a bank account. I care not how rich your soil, if you 

 keep drawing upon it without replenishing it, sooner or later you will 

 reach the bottom. 



