PROGRESSIVE -S H E : P;'<R : A- i S/I N G 



Progressive Sheep Raising 



By R. J. H. De Loach, Director 



Armour's Bureau of Agricultural Research 



and Economics 



The Sheep Situation Today 



THE year 1915 marked a new era in the American 

 Sheep industry. It was then that the national 

 movement was started for putting sheep back on 

 our American farms. 



For many years prior to that time 

 Why Sheep the drift of the sheep raising industry 



Went West in this country had been toward the 



great free ranges of the far west. 

 Grazing lands with an abundance of wild grasses were 

 plentiful and the cost of raising sheep under such condi- 

 tions was abnormally low, from the viewpoint of a trained 

 economist who insists upon assigning to everything 

 even wild pasture land its true economic value, and the 

 grasses gleaned from them were not represented in the 

 prices of the sheep which came from them to the mid- 

 west and eastern markets. 



Meanwhile the improved and cultivated lands of the 

 eastern states were rapidly increasing in value. The 

 owners specialized more and more upon the crops which 

 yielded the best returns and against which there was no 

 abnormal competition from the west. Consequently, 

 grain, vegetables, hogs and dairying became more prev- 

 alent and the sheep population dwindled in proportion. 



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