Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 529 



beef cattle being driven still farther west where the pastures were 

 not quite so valuable. Coupled with this change in the beef -breed- 

 ing industry came a demand for cattle feeding purposes, which has 

 caused a shortage of cattle today. With this increased demand for 

 feeding cattle has also come the cutting up of western ranges. All 

 of these factors have helped to bring about a shortage in the pro- 

 duction of beef, not only in Missouri, but in every section of the 

 country. 



Another phase of the beef cattle proposition which your presi- 

 dent has touched upon and which caused me to take up the study 

 of animal husbandry when, I was in college possibly more than 

 any other thing, was the fact that almost invariably the most 

 prosperous farmers in this community were the men who were 

 handling beef cattle year in and year out, the men who were feed- 

 ing the crops that they grew on their farms and converting them 

 into beef. In Indiana the same conditions prevailed as in Mis- 

 souri. In any direction from the Indiana experiment station, the 

 most attractive farms in the state were beef-cattle farms. It 

 interested me so much that a census of the state of Indiana was 

 made by sending out a list of questions to the cattle feeders. The 

 replies indicated that the average value of land in Indiana was 

 given as $60 per acre, but the average value of the land on which 

 cattle feeders were living and farming was slightly over $100 an 

 acre. At that time the average yield of corn in the state of 

 Indiana was less than 35 bushels per acre. The average yield re- 

 ported by the men who were feeding cattle was slightly over 50 

 bushels. 



All of you who have studied agricultural statistics probably 

 know that Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, markets a larger amount 

 of agricultural products annually than any other one county in the 

 United States. When I went through that county on the Pennsyl- 

 vania railroad for the first time, I saw that it was very deep soil 

 and knew it was a very productive soil, but I wondered how they 

 kept up the production of crops in that community where they had 

 been farming the land for over two hundred years. There was no 

 indication of it as we went through on, the railroad, but off the train 

 and out in the country was found a great beef cattle feeding in- 

 dustry. In that one eastern county that year they fed 60,000 

 beef cattle. 



They feed in a little different manner because they appreciate 

 the value of the soil and the value of the production of crops to a 



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