WHAT CROPS FOR FEEDING 45 



greater the quantity of manures produced. The 

 commercial fertilizer bill is our greatest tax, and it 

 is to a great extent unnecessary, for if businesslike 

 agriculture is followed, chemicals will be needed 

 only to a limited extent. It should be our policy 

 to purchase fertilizers in the form of feeding stuffs. 

 Take a dollar and purchase cottonseed meal or tank- 

 age or gluten, but instead of applying direct to the 

 soil, as sources of nitrogen in the fertilizer, first feed 

 them to live stock and get the value of the organized 

 condition of the elements. 



The important difference between plant food or 

 fertilizers and animal food or plants lies in the fact 

 that the plant takes the unorganized chemical 

 elements and manufactures or builds them into or- 

 ganized tissue, which is the plant or the fruit of the 

 plant. The plant or the fruit of the plant is fed to 

 live stock, and meat or milk or wool, or labor is 

 produced from the organized material. The animals 

 return to the soil the very chemical elements that 

 the plant originally contained, only in a disorgan- 

 ized condition, v^rhich is the only way in which 

 plants can use them for new growth. Thus the 

 plant feeds the animal, the animal feeds the plant. 



The animal changes raw materials into finished 

 products. The feeder can use corn, grass, cow- 

 peas, clover, bran and cottonseed meal and make 

 balanced rations for all classes of live stock. These 

 are simply raw materials, which command the 

 lowest prices when placed on the markets of the 

 world. An increased value follows their change 

 into a finished product. A dairy cow, when fed a 

 mixture of 25 pounds of corn stover, cowpea hay 

 and cottonseed meal, with a value of but a few 

 cents, will produce from them 2 pounds of butter 



