470 TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



fed, will reduce the necessity of a large outlay for the supplements to 

 the corn ration such as cottonseed meal and oil meal, and that they con- 

 stitute a cheaper form of material for supplementing the corn ration than 

 these other foods. In that connection I think we need to keep in mind 

 the advantages of the farm products, of growing more of the leguminous 

 crops on the farm. In the first place, they furnish a cheaper substitute 

 or supplement for the corn than buying the alfalfa that is grown outside 

 and ground and treated and sold as a commercial foodstuff, and they are 

 grown at home and on the farm, and we save the expense of shipping 

 under the high transportation rates, and they increase the returns that 

 are obtained from feeding the corn crop out on the farm. 



Not only that, but it gives a better system of rotation in our farming 

 operations and better means of maintaining fertility. In order to get 

 the best results from our farming lands, we need to rotate our crops, 

 and we ought to have all parts of the farm in clover once in four years. 

 We should get onto a system of rotation on our farms and seeding clover 

 with the small grain that will put all the land of the farm into clover or 

 alfalfa once in four years, and feed the grain grown on the farm to live 

 stock fattened on the farm and put the manure back on the farm. When 

 you do that, you need not worry about diminishing soil fertility. 



But the man who grows grain and hauls that grain off and sells it, 

 has to face the important problem of declining production and diminish- 

 ing fertility of his land; and that is more important in these days than 

 it has ever been before. I think we can well afford to keep this factor in 

 mind in our feeding operations on the farm, growing more of the clover 

 and alfalfa, and we will have the feed that is best suited to combine with 

 the corn and produce economical results, thereby reducing the outlay of 

 cash expended for cottonseed meal and for oil meal. And probably we 

 can also increase the soy beans grown upon the farm, to be used in a 

 similar way. I will give you some results later in the use of soy beans 

 in feeding to hogs, that indicate that this is a means of saving a good 

 deal of money paid out for supplements to the corn in feeding swine, 

 and while we have not the same tests to any considerable extent in feed- 

 ing cattle, it is probable that it will also hold true there, because the soy 

 bean does furnish the protein, an element that we get in the cottonseed 

 meal and the linseed meal in supplementing the corn ration. 



Then the question of limited grain rations in fattening steers is an 

 important question, particularly at times when corn and other grains are 

 high in price, and the feeders have found corn at a constant increase 

 just now. The probability is we will see corn 10 or 15 cents a bushel 

 higher before we raise another crop than it is today, and it may be even 

 more than that. And while that is helpful to the general situation of 

 agriculture, perhaps, it is not helpful to the feeder that has to buy that 

 corn and feed it to cattle. At times when there is relatively a narrow 

 margin between well-finished cattle and cattle that are moderately fin- 

 ished, it is important to make just as much saving in the grain ration 

 as we can possibly make on a sound basis, and that is especially true 

 if we have high-priced grain. 



That is not the situation just now. There has been a wide margin 

 between the highly finished cattle and the moderately finished cattle, but 



