DAIRYING 26l 



and was not available until thoroughly stirred and dis- 

 solved ; until then there was little sweetening effect. 



So it is with soil fertility. Until it becomes soluble it 

 is not food for plants. Manure has a disintegrating action 

 on fertilizing compounds: it sets free the plant food. 



Dairying: a balance in fertility. An illustration may 

 now be in place to show the important role that dairying 

 plays as a soil builder in the realm of agriculture. Let us 

 assume that a man purchases a farm of one hundred acres 

 for which he pays $100 per acre, the whole amounting 

 to $10,000. In this case, he invests his money in soil 

 fertility, from which he desires to draw interest just as 

 he would were he to deposit his money in a bank. 



We will now assume that wheat is grown on the farm : 

 on the entire one hundred acres and for twenty years, 

 the rate of production being sixteen bushels per acre, 

 which, according to statistics, is a high average for 

 twenty years of continual cropping on good soil without 

 the addition of chemical or stable manures. At eighty 

 cents per bushel, the entire production of wheat, at the 

 end of twenty years, will amount to $25,000. 



But there is still another side : with each ton of wheat 

 there goes $8.35 worth of fertility ; with the entire yield 

 for the twenty years there goes $8,832 in fertility leav- 

 ing $1,168 only, out of the entire original investment. In- 

 stead of simply drawing interest on the capital invested, 

 there has been drawn nearly the entire capital. On 

 the face of the purchase eighty-eight per cent, of the 

 original investment has been withdrawn by twenty years 

 of continual cropping. 



\Ye now will assume, that instead of wheat alone, a 

 dairy herd of fifteen cows is maintained in connection 

 with wheat farming; that all the grain fed to the cows 

 is purchased ; and that the manure is carefully pre- 



