FORTY-FIRST ANNUAL CONVENTION 33 



LIVE STOCK FARMING AND GRAIN FARMING, 



H. C. Horneman, Watseka. 



The first test as to whether dairy or hve stock farming is 

 better than grain farming is the profits of the two different 

 types. Mr. Foss has shown you what he has gotten on his farm 

 through years of keeping of records, and Mr. Mason is known 

 as a successful dairyman. My running of a dairy farm has not 

 covered a long enough period of time to say to what degree of 

 success I may carry mine out. 



At present it is like the man's automobile. He was hsting 

 his assets at a bank and he said he had an automobile. The! 

 banker said, ''That is not an asset. That is a liabiHty." That is 

 much the way my farm has been in the past year. It is a liabil- 

 ity. It has taken a lot of work to get things in shape. 



Of course it is possible for people in touch with Dr. Hopkins 

 to carry on a permanent system of grain farming without live 

 stock. While it is true it is possible to carry this out, it has not 

 been worked out over the country with much success. People do 

 not seem to take to it, for some reason or other. We reinforce 

 manure on our farm with phosphate, and we figure we increase 

 the value of the manure many times. We also try to spread it 

 promptly on the field. All of us have observed in localities 

 where live stock farming is carried on that the crops are better, 

 even when no attention has been paid to phosphates, while in 

 grain farming districts the land has been decreased in fertility. 



While the system of grain farming that has been carried 

 on in this country in the past has had an injurious effect, yet it 

 must have had certain advantages to the land holders, or it 

 would not have been carried on so generally. It must be true, 

 however, that no system of farming can be justified that impov- 

 erishes the soil and makes it more difiicult from year to year for 



