772 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



BETTER YIELDING GRASS LANDS. 



By Prof. Chas. F. Curtiss, Dean of Agriculture, I. S. C. 



We have had and are having a great corn revival throughout Illinois 

 and the entire corn belt and it is an excellent thing. It certainly means 

 that we are going to produce very much better results. We are going 

 to get more from the corn lands of this great West, but we need to have 

 as well, as a corn revival, a grass revival. We need to study the grass 

 crop as well as the corn crop. 



The two great products of the central west are corn and grass and 

 the greater of these is grass. This is, the grass and the forage crops of 

 pur farms and our farming states are of greater value, taken the one 

 year with another, on an average, than any other single crop that we 

 produce. 



As a rule, we give less consideration to the hay and grass lands — 

 and especially is this true of our grazing lands — than to any other part 

 of our farms. I believe they are the lands that are the most susceptible 

 to improvement, and it is the crop in which we can increase the returns 

 with the least expenditure of additional labor, and at the least cost. 



We are confronted with new conditions in the agriculture of the cen- 

 tral west today. We have seen these lands advance, within a decade or 

 a little more, from $50 and $75 to $100 and $150 per acre, and in dairy 

 stock and it is my prediction that they have not yet reached the limit. 

 At the same ime, while hese western lands have been advancing in value 

 we have experienced a decline of 25 to 50 per cent in the lands further 

 east, the lands of the Ohio and Miami valleys and eastward from that. 

 There will sometbime be a corresponding advance in the lands of some 

 other sections, if we do not give attention to the right methods of main- 

 taining he producive capaciy of our farming land. 



We all know that as valuable as corn is, it is not a complete ration, 

 and if we expect to produce the best results in growing animals, and in 

 dairy stock, and in developing horses, and in maintaining the breeding 

 qualities of our animals, we must have a variety of feed stuffs. We must 

 have the constituents that go to build up the bone and muscle and prop- 

 erly develop the animal in the highest form and highest state of excel- 

 lence. These things are absolutely essential; never so much so as today, 

 in view of the high-priced land that we have, in view of the quicker 

 returns we must get from these animals, and the higher excellence that 

 we must produce in the finished product. That point is generally con- 

 ceded by the most successful stock men. In the face of the fact that we 

 have higher priced labor, higher priced feed products of all kinds, the 

 problem presented is, how we may cheapen the production of these 

 animals by the ration we use, or the methods we employ in growing and 

 producing them on our farms, and produce the finished product at com- 

 paratively a lower cost and without sacrificing any of the excellence. 

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