CORN GROWERS ASSOCIATION. 5 1 



is the breeding of corn, and I shall therefore not touch upon that, but 

 shall discuss very briefly what might be termed some of the factors in 

 successful corn production, aside from the seed. 



Feed the Corn to Live Stock. — The most fundamental and most im- 

 portant factor of all is to establish such a system of farming that you 

 will feed every bushel of corn you produce, except what you sell for 

 seed at high prices, to high class stock on your farm. With all the 

 effort and intelligence that the Missouri farmer or corn breeder can put 

 into his business, it will be impossible to produce high and profitable 

 yields on land that is poor ; and there is no other very profitable way, 

 as a whole, to keep your land up than by feeding all of the corn and all 

 of the other crops of that sort which you produce on the farm, and so 

 arrange your feeding lots and sheds and racks that the plant food, the 

 droppings from the animals, shall not be carried into the Gulf of Mexico 

 by the first rains that come. It is too often the case that the farmer will 

 not move his manger from one year to another; and you will find a 

 spot there for about one hundred yards around that manger so rich that 

 it will produce nothing, or weeds which are even worse than nothingj 

 while other land in the neighborhood of the manger is starving for food. 

 Then, too, he will put his feed rack on some rocky point that is not 

 worth anything because it is too stony and dry and hot in summer ; and 

 in that way there is a prodigious waste of plant food on the farm out- 

 side of the selling, even when a man is pursuing this policy of feeding. 

 So this I need only mention as one very important factor in successful 

 corn production— feeding the land continually and keeping up the 

 fertility. 



Rotation of Crops — Then I would have a systematic rotation, and 

 this is the first time I think I have ever advised that. I have always 

 advised the contrary ; and to the man who would follow the other prac- 

 tice I would say it is undoubtedly better, provided one will put the neces- 

 sary intelligence into it, but the danger is he will not follow any rotation 

 at all. The Eastern farmer is a slave to rotation, as was his father and 

 his grandfather. It is one of the greatest barriers to progress among 

 the Pennsylvania farmers that they have that rotation on their hands 

 which they cannot abandon. It is as much a part of their traditions as 

 anything else in their whole lives. They will not adopt new methods of 

 production or a new system of farming if it in any way interferes with 

 that rotation. They are in a rut. But the Missouri farmer is sinning 

 or erring in another direction— he has no rotation at all. It would be 

 better, for a while at least, for him to get into the rut of this system of 

 rotation. I would advise a rotation of which clover or cowpeas would be 



