530 TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



experience of some other people, whether they are here or not, I did not 

 get market price for my corn and hay. 



I own and operate a farm that has been a so-called good stock farm 

 for a generation or two. I might say that my experience in farming and 

 cattle feeding has been on two different farms. My brother and I farmed 

 together for seven or eight years on one farm and were pleased to see 

 the fertility of the soil increase and the yield increase. Then I purchased 

 another farm and sold my interest to my brother, and in a way started 

 over again, started with a soil that was somewhat depleted, although, as 

 I say, the farm had been considered a so-called good stock farm for many 

 years. And, as I said, during the eight or ten years that I have been on 

 the farm that I now own and operate, it has been my greatest delight to 

 watch the yields increase year by year. I am certain that during the last 

 four years there has been twice as much corn and clover produced on this 

 farm, as I was able to produce the first four years I operated it. Of 

 course, there have been recently a series of good seasons, but largely the 

 vast amount of manure that has been returned to the land has been 

 responsible for the increased yields. 



I don't know what the experience of most of you has been, but in our 

 community on the farms that have been devoted to live stock, to feeding, 

 there is a noticeable increase, a decided noticeable increase in the yield 

 of corn over what it was some fifteen or twenty years ago. Sixty and 

 eighty and even a hundred bushels of corn is no more uncommon on our 

 best farms than fifty and sixty bushels was when I was a lad. I remem- 

 ber very well that if a man claimed that he had seventy-five or eighty 

 bushels of corn per acre twenty or twenty-five years ago, we were skep- 

 tical; we scarcely believed him. That is true in our community. I am 

 not saying whether it was in yours. But eighty and ninety bushels and 

 one hundred bushels is not uncommon, and you know why. 



We perhaps will never find an animal that so economically turns 

 corn into meat as the hog. The sheep is the scavenger of all time. But 

 to market the clover that should be raised and the silage and fodder that 

 must be saved on these Iowa farms there is but one answer, and that is 

 cattle. Dairying is sure, slow and sure, and the pure-bred breeder is es- 

 sential; but the vast amount of our clover and silage on these Iowa farms, 

 a very vast amount must naturally be marketed through the fattening 

 steer. It is a business fraught with hazard. It may be somewhat a 

 speculation. But this increase in the fertility of these Iowa farms is a 

 profit that we have not always accorded to the feed lot. 



Iowa soil was deep and rich originally, but as our state grows older 

 we will finally come to the parting of the ways, although this may seem 

 so remote that you wonder whether it is worthy of consideration. But I 

 believe that the time to talk conservation, whether it is conservation of 

 soil, conservation of the forests or conservation of any natural resources, 

 is while we have something to conserve rather than to let it all slip away 

 and then begin to talk conservation. So I believe conservation of the soil 

 is a worth-while subject. 



Our land will gradually, in generations to come, produce less and less, 

 and I can imagine — whether you will go that far with me or not — I can 

 imagine that under certain conditions these broad, rich Iowa acres might, 



