STABLE MANURE 



do not feed all their crops to livestock, and the 

 amount of food-stuffs, for human beings and 

 animals, that is now going off the farms is none 

 too great. 



Many farmers who incline to believe that they 

 are safely guarding fertility by feeding the most 

 of their crops are not returning to the fields one 

 third of the plant-food that their crops remove. 

 There is no virtue in feeding when the manure 

 is permitted to waste away. The losses in stable 

 and barnyard, the wastes from bad distribution 

 by animals, and the sales from the farm of some 

 crops, animals, and milk, lead to the estimate that 

 one half of the farms on which livestock is kept 

 do not give to the fields in the form of manure over 

 30 per cent of the fertility taken out of them by 

 crops. This estimate, for which no accurate 

 data is possible, probably is too high. The sales 

 of food for man and animal are a necessity, and 

 the scheme of farming involving such sales is 

 right, provided the farmer makes use of other 

 supplies of fertility. The area devoted to such 

 sales will grow greater because human needs are 

 imperative. Livestock will become more and more 

 a means of working over the material that man 

 cannot eat the grass, hay, stalks, by-products 



[123] 



