204 Fish and Game Warden. [Bull. No. 1. 



had to be purchased in the market and restored to the fields. 

 The straw — 4,500,000 tons — that produced this wheat, repre- 

 sents over $16,000,000 worth of fertilizer in nitrogen, phos- 

 phorus and potassium alone. In view of this fact it seems 

 uncommonly strange that an article, a half column or so in 

 length, given out by a city farmer, we are told, should appear 

 in our leading newspapers, advising farmers to burn or dis- 

 pose of their straw stacks and raise a few more grains of wheat 

 on the ground where the straw stacks stood. By such an opera- 

 tion the wheat farmers would hot only destroy or lose thou- 

 sands of tons of fertilizer, but in the case of burning the straw 

 on the ground would bake the latter to a cinder, rendering it 

 unfit to produce crops for years to come unless fertilizers 

 should be added. 



This reminds one of Horace Greeley's definition of an agri- 

 culturist and a farmer. An agriculturist, Mr. Greeley said, was 

 a person who lived in the city, and who out of his city business 

 could make money enough to enable him to own and operate a 

 farm and, incidentally, had time enough to advise the country 

 farmers in general how to operate and manage farms. On the 

 other hand, a farmer, Mr. Greeley said, was a man who lived 

 in the country on his farm, and run and managed it success- 

 fully enough to enable him to support himself and family and, 

 incidentally, to produce surplus enough to support the city. 



In 1909 Kansas produced 147,005,120 bushels of corn at a 

 cost of about the same number of pounds of fertilizer, worth 

 in the market over 21 million dollars. The stalks that produced 

 this corn contained about the same amount of fertilizer as the 

 corn itself and was worth about the same amount of money, 

 21 million, or a total of over 40 million dollars' worth of ferti- 

 lizer. 



It takes $3.25 worth of fertilizer to produce a ton of alfalfa 

 hay, each ton taking from the soil over fifty pounds of phos- 

 phorus and potassium. Figuring on this basis, it would take 

 eleven and a half million dollars' worth of fertilizer to pro- 

 duce the three and a half million tons of alfalfa raised in Kan- 

 sas last year (1910). 



From the same bulletin, referred to above, we get figures 

 showing the value of the wastes from domestic animals to be 

 as follows : 



Wastes from a horse for one year $28.86 



Wastes from a cow for one year 40 . 49 



Wastes from a sheep for one year 2.58 



Wastes from a pig for one year 3 . 34 



In view of the above facts it is hard to explain why so many 

 barns and stockyards are built on sloping grounds that permit 

 the water from every rain to wash the fertilizing materials 

 into ravines and creeks, to be carried awaj^ and to be lost for- 

 ever to the farm. 



