REPORT OF SECRETARY. 1 5 



SECRETARY'S REPORT. 



Gentlemen of the Board of Agriculture : 



You are now assembled in the forty-first annual session of your 

 honorable body that you may hear the reports of your officers concerning 

 the work of the past year, and also that you may deliberate and plan for 

 the future welfare and development of the agricultural interests of the 

 great commonwealth of Missouri. There has perhaps never before been 

 a time when all classes so fully realized that agriculture is the mainstay 

 of the country as they do now, and there has probably never before been 

 a time when the general average condition of our farmers was more 

 prosperous than it is today ; and I am gratified to record the fact that 

 Missouri farmers have a full share in that prosperity. 



Missouri, containing only one-fiftieth of the land area of the United 

 States, has this year produced one-eleventh of the corn and one-twentieth 

 of the wheat of the entire country, and had it not been for unprecedented 

 storms, which swept the State during the months of August and Sep- 

 tember, we would have made a much better showing for the industry 

 and thrift of our farmers. With our bountiful crops, and prices for 

 grains and live stock fairly remunerative, the farmers of the State are 

 able to enjoy to a greater degree than ever before those things which 

 make a people better, happier and more intelligent. That our farmers are 

 an intelligent and progressive class of people is, I think, clearly proven 

 by the fact that during the last four years the yield of corn, our prin- 

 cipal field crop, has been greater than for any previous consecutive four 

 years in the history of the State. The total yield of corn for the last 

 four years has been 13 1.4 bushels per acre, or an average yearly yield of 

 32.8 bushels. This shows that our farmers are at least maintaining at 

 par the fertility of the land. In making up this average, it should be 

 stated that many of our counties make a much larger yield, and that this 

 average includes every acre of the poorer districts of the State not so 

 well adapted to corn cultivation. 



For the same four years — 1902- 1905, inclusive — the average yield of 

 corn in Iowa, one of the greatest corn states in the Union, was only 31.8 

 bushels, or one bushel less than the average yield in Missouri. In Nebras- 

 ka, another great corn state, for the same period, the average annual yield 

 was 30.9 bushels, or 1.9 bushels less than in Missouri; and in Kansas, on 

 the west, another border state, the average yield was only 26 bushels, or 

 6.8 bushels less than our own farmers have produced. The only state 



