634 . IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



this soil, so as not only to maintain this fertility, but to make it more 

 fertile and productive in the years that are to come. That is the great 

 problem before the people of the state of Iowa, and I want to congratulate 

 you men of the Corn Belt Meat Producers' Association, upon the fact that 

 you are the ones who, in my opinion, are successfully solving this ques- 

 tion of maintaining soil fertility. The practicable plan of maintaining 

 the fertility of the soil is to market the unsalable and rough feeds of the 

 farm through the medium of live stock, take care of the manure, and 

 return it back to the farm. We cannot indefinitely maintain the fertility 

 of the soil by a simple rotation of crops. Take the experience of the 

 Ohio station, covering a period of eighteen years, in which they have fol- 

 lowed rotations that included clover regularly. Some of these rotations 

 are four years and some five. Covering a period of the last year (you 

 can find this information in Bulletin No. 246 of the Ohio experiment 

 station), they have found that where barnyard manure was applied to 

 this land that was being rotated, in comparison with land that was being 

 rotated but did not have any manure, the former has returned $2.73 a 

 ton in increased yields upon the land, where the manure was taken right 

 out to the field; and they have found that manure that was kept under 

 cover and was not allowed to leach out, has returned increased yields of 

 $3.73 per ton; and when the manure was treated (as it needs to be for 

 the soils back there) with mineral elements, such as phosphorus and lime, 

 the increased production due to the application of that manure has been 

 very much larger than in the cases that 1 have already cited, running up 

 as high as $5 per ton for the manure. 



Now, when you take into consideration that the average 1,000-pound 

 steer upon full feed produces manure at the rate of about seven or eight 

 tons per year, you can see how important it is from the standpoint of 

 maintaining the fertility of the soil, to take care of this manure carefully 

 and return it back to the land. You men know that that is true. You 

 can go through this state in any of the older regions, and wherever you 

 find a man who is producing fifty and sixty bushels of corn per acre year 

 after year, you find a man who is taking care of his land; and in nine 

 cases out of ten you find a man who is marketing his surplus produce 

 through the medium of live stock, and returning the manure to the farm. 

 On the other hand, if his neighbor is raising twenty-five or thirty bushels 

 per acre, you almost invariably find a man who is marketing his crops 

 at the elevator. And so I want to congratulate you upon the business 

 that you are in. The Corn Belt Meat Producers' Association, or the 

 people of Iowa who are producing live stock, are creating a market for 

 the rough, unsalable feed of their farms, and converting that feed into 

 human food, and at the same time they are solving this question of soil 

 fertility. I want to assure you, on the part of our extension department, 

 that we emphasize, in and out of season, every member of the force, the 

 necessity of maintaining the fertility of our soil. If we can be of service 

 to any one of these different communities here represented, we stand 

 willing and ready to give everything that we have in that service, and 

 we hope that we can co-operate with you in some way to work out these 

 problems that we have in the state. 



