88 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [P. D. 4. 



In times past the keepers, — or, may I say, the wasters of the 

 soil, — because of mistakes and unorganized effort on their part, 

 have not always been recognized as keepers of the world, yet 

 the fact that they are remains, and some day, not many years 

 away, they will be recognized as such, and the keeper's great- 

 ness will be measured not only by the amount and quality of 

 the necessities of life he offers the world, but by his ability to 

 maintain and increase the fertility of his soil, and by the con- 

 dition in which he hands it to another generation; and this 

 leads me to what I have to say. In the present day it is crim- 

 inal to follow any longer a plan of farm production that de- 

 pletes soil fertility, when it has been clearly shown that by a 

 right system and rotation crops can be grown year after year, 

 perhaps indej&nitely, and at the same time maintain and in- 

 crease fertility. And the most practical system of doing this, 

 as we see it, from a scientijfic and humanitarian point of view, 

 is one in which the crops grown, or at least a large share of 

 them, are fed to live stock, and by the live stock transformed 

 into food and clothing products, while the waste or manure is 

 returned to the fields to help keep up and increase fertility. 



We admit that it is possible to farm without live stock, 

 keep up soil fertility and get a fair wage for labor expended, 

 but it is not as practical as the live-stock method for two or 

 three reasons which we will give later. 



It does not follow that live stock is a panacea — a cure-all; 

 a bad system of live-stock farming is as bad as a poorly man- 

 aged system in any other business; the farm can be eaten up 

 and the fertility wasted with live stock as quickly as without 

 it. There is a combination of conditions that must be met 

 before live-stock farming is all that it should be. First, we 

 must have good stock, — stock fitted to environment of loca- 

 tion, crops, markets and to the tastes of the farmer; then the 

 feed for the animals must be grown, or at least most of it, on 

 the farm. Profitable stock husbandry is not founded on the 

 purchase of feeds. The feed and care must be supplied intel- 

 ligently, so the cost will not overrun the income; and perhaps 

 the greatest of all the requirements, the manure must be care- 

 fully returned to the soil. When these conditions are met a 

 long step has been taken to care for the fertility; the crops 



