THIRTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART XII 647 



her station in agriculture she must get back into live stock production. 

 Agriculture has been called the wheel of commerce, and in my estima- 

 tion, stock raising is the main spoke in this great agricultural wheel. 

 Being imbued with a natural love for the old cow and having foreseen 

 a beef cattle shortage coming, I decided to secure aid for the encourage- 

 ment of beef production in Iowa, and in the Thirty-fourth General As- 

 sembly, we were successful in securing an appropriation for $7,500 to 

 promote the beef cattle industry in Iowa. Beef production will, and of 

 necessity must, become an Iowa industry. With it will come more silos, 

 more permanent blue grass pastures, more alfalfa and clover, less soil 

 robbing, and more conservation of the fertility of our soils. The result 

 will be less acres of farming with increased yields of forage and grains, 

 a more prosperous people, and an increased awakening of love for the 

 farm. A prosperous people is most usually a contented people. If the 

 farmer does well, he naturally loves his occupation. Prosperity will, in 

 most cases, solve the question of making the farm more attractive. Beef 

 production is a topic widely discussed nowadays, and Iowa must of 

 necessity send out her influence for good or evil. Will you lend a help- 

 ing hand? 



There are over 200,000 quarter section farms in Iowa. At least half 

 of these ought to be producing some sort of beef. This would give us 

 100,000 farmers in the entire state, engaged in beef production. Assum- 

 ing that these farmers have farms averaging 160 acres each, each farmer 

 engaged in the production of beef could easily keep enough cows to 

 produce a car load of baby beef, (twenty head to the car). If each of 

 these farmers would market this car load of baby beef, there would be 

 20,000 head in each county or 2,000,000 produced on the farms in the 

 state of Iowa. If these cattle w^ere fed out as baby beef, they would 

 weigh from 1,000 to 1,200 pounds at eighteen to twenty-four months of 

 age, and at present prices, which will be a conservative price for an 

 estimate, they would net close to $100 per head, or about $2,000 per car 

 for each farmer thus engaged. This would mean a net income for each 

 county of about $2,000,000 or a grand total of $200,000,000 for beef pro- 

 duction in Iowa alone. This would only utilize half the farms, the other 

 half could engage in dairying, truck farming or exclusive grain farming. 



To be prosperous we must market our crops via the live stock route, 

 thus keeping the fertility on our farms. It has been said that the United 

 States was capable of feeding the w^orld, but the problem now confronting 

 us is, whether or not we can, in years to come, feed our own millions. 

 He who produces two blades of grass, or two pounds of beef, where 

 formerly but one grew, is a benefactor to humanity. Conservation is a 

 prime factor of importance today. Beef production is a matter of special 

 interest, and important to all the farmers in the Corn Belt states. We 

 have learned how to raise the crops best adapted to our soils and climate, 

 but we have not learned that w^e must return to our land a part of what 

 we take out. The right manner of producing beef is particularly adapted 

 to the maintenance of our soil fertility. Each farm produces a large 

 amount of roughage, for which there is not, nor ever will be any profit- 

 able market, but with the beef herd, you can profitably use it all. The 



