128 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



present volume of business. The necessity of keeping the cost of foods 

 within reach of the masses that is, at such a level that the laboring 

 man can be well nourished and highly efficient, will eventually demand 

 that the distance between the producer and consumer be shortened. 



It is possible, but not at all probable, that livestock production will 

 be overdone as the area that can be devoted exclusively to livestock pro- 

 duction is rapidly disappearing. 



After all, the considerations that will carry the greatest weight in 

 determining the future farming policy of corn belt farmers will be eco- 

 nomic. Agricultural practice will surely gravitate toward the more profit- 

 able systems of farming, regardless of whether those systems include or 

 exclude livestock. 



I venture to suggest that the livestock producers of the country are 

 not doing and never have done enough in the way of putting livestock pro- 

 duction on a sound economic basis. Livestock production no sooner be- 

 comes profitable enough to be an attractive financial proposition than it 

 receives a setback due to a variety of causes, some of which are at 

 present beyond the control of the producer. 



I do not come to you with a remedy. I do, however, suggest that you 

 continue to give this subject careful consideration, for, unless meat 

 producers, whose chief business it is to protect their own interests, main- 

 tain a live and effective organization — an organization which at all times 

 is led and controlled, and whose policies are determined by men who are 

 interested primarily from the producer's standpoint — meat production, 

 as a leading factor in American agriculture, will gradually decline. 



As we study the situation with a view to future prospects of the 

 business, a few facts are worthy of our best thought. Some of these 

 are encouraging; some are di'scouraging. 



As yet, railroads, stock yard companies and packing interests — in other 

 words, the manufacturing and distributing agencies involved in the meat 

 trade — have done mighty little in encouraging livestock production in 

 a way which looks to making it a permanently profitable enterprise of the 

 corn belt farms. I say this not in the spirit of criticism, but with a view 

 of calling attention of these interests to an undeveloped opportunity, an 

 underworked field of endeavor. They have pursued a short-sighted policy, 

 if, indeed, they have had a policy, that disregards the permanency of the 

 best agricultural development of the whole country. 



An early recognition of the interests of the meat producers of this 

 country and the adoption of policies which will materially assist in 

 placing meat production on a conservatively profitable basis will surely 

 augment their prosperity. 



I have not overlooked the fact that the interests referred to have 

 made some attempts to encourage livestock production, but they have not 

 looked to the permanency of the business; they have been thinking pri- 

 marily of their own immediate profit. 



The time will come when the producer will be looked upon as the 

 most necessary factor. The producer is fast becoming sufficiently intelli- 

 gent to cease to be a producer of anything which is produced at a loss. 



