STATE DAIRY ASSOCIATION. 341 



In Denmark, Sweden and Germany I saw land, mostly rather inferior 

 by nature, but worth from $300 per acre upwards ; in Holland, land 

 worth from $800 to $2,000 per acre; in the Island of Jersey, $1,200 to 

 $2,500 per acre, with an average yearly rental of about $50 per acre. 



In these countries the fattening steer is unknown, but cows are 

 everywhere. The cow is a cheaper producer of human food than the 

 steer, and must increase as our lands become dearer. 



Again, the wonderful effect of dairying as a means of keeping up 

 the fertility of the soil is seen to good advantage in Europe. In the 

 dairy countries the land grows better crops than it did twenty-five or 

 fifty years ago. Denmark is the best example of this. Thirty years 

 ago agriculture was at a low ebb there, and the people were coming to 

 America in swarms. Now, after their dairy industry has been built up, 

 very few are leaving home, and the Danish farmers appear to be the 

 most intelligent and most prosperous in Europe, and their lands are 

 richer today than ever before. The same is true regarding the increase 

 in fertility of Germany, Switzerland, the Channel Islands, and the dairy 

 parts of England. 



It is in America, with some of the richest land in the world, where 

 we hear the most about exhausted soils and decreasing fertility. 



Preservation of Manure. — Maintaining the fertility of the land re- 

 quires the saving and application of the manure to the land. In Europe 

 this is done much better, as a rule, than here. On the majority of farms 

 there is a careful provision for the preservation of the manure. It is 

 not thrown out under the eaves of the barn to be leached all summer by 

 rain. Generally a cemented pit of some kind, often covered with a roof, 

 is provided to hold the manure. The liquid, as well as the solid, is saved 

 and applied to the land. In Switzerland manure is often carried some 

 distance up the side of the mountains in a box strapped to the back. 

 The Jersey Island farmer, paying $50 to $60 per acre annual rental, uses 

 about 20 loads of stable manure per acre annually, or about 90 loads of 

 seaweed. 



Intensive Cultivation. — The European farmer farms less land than 

 we do. He does not attempt to spread over all the land in sight, but makes 

 a comfortable living on a piece of land a Missouri farmer would not 

 think large enough to raise a pair of mules. He does not have any 

 fence corners to grow up to weeds, or plow around a small patch of 

 brush. Every foot of land is utilized. Where the land is so rocky or 

 so steep it cannot be cultivated, it is carefully planted to forest trees. I 

 fully believe there are more weeds grown annually in one county in this 

 or adjoining states than grow in the entire German empire. 



