522 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



From this gross income of $1,322 will be deducted $125 for 5 tons of 

 bone meal, leaving $1,197 to pay for labor, interest on investment, and 

 other charges against the farm. 



The growing of the clover for seed instead of for hay is thus seen to 

 be even more profitable than the hay proposition. The labor of harvesting 

 the seed is much less exacting than handling the crop for hay, and if a 

 rain or two should come after the seed crop is cut the damage is far less 

 than in the case of the hay crop. 



Besides, instead of the hay being sold, resulting in considerable loss of 

 soil fertility to the farm, all the clover straw and chaff would be returned 

 to the fields and the fertility of the soil maintained much more surely than 

 by plan 1. 



It is thus seen that by simply modifying the present system of corn 

 and oat growing on this farm by the addition of clover grown for either 

 hay or seed the gross income is more than doubled and the land greatly 

 improved at the same time. The returns from this system of farming 

 will just about pay 5 per cent interest on a $15,000 investment and mode- 

 rate wages to one man for the year. It would not satisfy the man who 

 had bought a farm and was trying to pay for it out of the proceeds of the 

 farm. 



PLAN 3.— A GRAIN AND CLOVER FARM. 



If the crops grown on this farm and the prices received for them are 

 examined critically, attention is attracted at once to the fact that the 

 largest return per acre, $30, is secured from the corn crop. From the 

 standpoint, therefore, of profit and the use of the crops here under con- 

 sideration it is desirable to grow as large an acreage of corn each year 

 as is consistent with good farming. 



Some of the important factors that must be kept in mind in increasing 

 the acreage of corn are the insects that affect the crop injuriously when 

 grown too many season on the same field in succession, the necessity of 

 maintaining the nitrogen and humus supply in the soil by the culture of 

 some leguminous crop, and the supplying of adequate amounts of certain 

 mineral fertilizers, like the phosphates, to secure maximum corn crops 

 and insure the continued productiveness of the farm. 



EOTATION TO BE ADOPTED. 



A rotation which has been found satisfactory and effective in parts of 

 the corn belt and which puts half the farm in corn each year is as fol- 

 lows: (1) Corn, (2) corn, (3) oats, (4) clover. This is a four-year ro- 

 tation in which half the fields are in corn each year. It is true that in 

 this rotation corn follows corn for two years, but this is not particularly 

 objectionable on good corn ground, especially when, following corn, the 

 field is given two years' rest from this crop and opportunity is thus af- 

 forded to free the land from the more serious pests of the corn. This is 

 also a type of farming differing but little from that already in operation 

 on the farm under consideration, and hence easy to adopt. 



