530 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



greater extent than we do in the west. A man does not feed 100 

 steers or even. 30 or 40 steers, but in most cases 5 or 10. These 

 cattle are fed largely on rented lands, which is one of the few sec- 

 tions of the United States where beef cattle are fed for market by 

 tenant farmers. In Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Kansas, the 

 cattle feeders are the men who own their own farms. The Lan- 

 caster county farms are rented on a share basis. If the tenant 

 markets his corn, oats and wheat, the money received is divided 

 with the landlord. The tenant is allowed to feed all of the hay, 

 but divides with the landlord the income from that sold from the 

 farm. That is the basis of the system of cattle feeding they have 

 in that county. That is what they believe in doing, because of the 

 fact that it builds up the fertility of the soil. The land owner be- 

 lieves in it because he knows that when the tenant feeds that 

 roughage he will buy a little more grain or concentrates to feed 

 with his roughage, and thus he is building up continuously the 

 fertility of the soil year in and year out. This is probably far 

 from the subject that has been assigned to me this afternoon — The 

 Production of Feeders. 



Feeders are produced, and have been produced in the past, 

 and possibly will be continued to be produced in the future, on the 

 land that is especially adaptable to grass. That is, while the 

 silo may come in to a very large extent as a supplement to pas- 

 tures for the maintenance of beef breeding herds, yet we have 

 not reached the stage where a man can produce market cattle un- 

 less he has a large amount of pasture available for them. When- 

 ever the land becomes so valuable that it cannot be utilized for the 

 production of grass, it is too valuable to feed for breeding cattle. 

 In the cattle feeding industry there is practically no relation be- 

 tween the value of the land and the feeding of the beef cattle. A 

 bushel of corn or a ton of hay, straw or silage will not go any 

 farther in fattening beef cattle, whether it is produced on land 

 worth fifty or two hundred dollars per acre. Whenever land ad- 

 vances in value to such an extent that we can no longer grow grain 

 and raise feeds adaptable to cattle, it will be so valuable that cattle 

 cannot be fed on it. Until that time comes, the cattle feeding will 

 continue to be a leading industry in agricultural communities. 



The cattle producer must necessarily seek those sections of the 

 country and state where he can afford to keep his land in per- 

 manent pasture. In other words, we use cattle on our farms for 

 two purposes : In the first place, to supply a market for the crops 



