370 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIA'iION. 



price commanded by first-class butter. The energy spent in pro- 

 ducing the butter fat for the poor butter is just as great as in the 

 production of that for the butter of high quahty, yet the returns 

 are only one-third as great. Why not get the other two-thirds 

 and make the same energy return many times as much profit ? 



Searching the Earth for What Is Right at Hand. 



People have long been studying markets and competition 

 from other countries. Farmers have been seeking cheaper lands 

 in less congenial locations, climates and surroundings, suffering 

 the privations of pioneer life in a new country and depriving 

 themselves and their families of the privileges of a developed 

 civilization in the hope of getting a farm or earning more money. 

 All of these questions have been much discussed in public speech 

 and print, while the real economic agricultural problems and 

 possibilities, right at our feet, have been largely overlooked. The 

 problem for the people of Illinois is how to develop their own 

 agricultural possibilities and utilize to the best advantage the 

 human energy being expended upon their farms. 



A Cow Per Acre Means Nothing. 



The fundamental principle on which all agriculture is based 

 is : ''How much of a given product can be permanently obtained 

 from an acre of land, and at what profit?" From this funda- 

 mental, basal standpoint, the dairyman's problem is: ''How 

 much milk and butter fat can be obtained per acre of land, and 

 at what gain?" 



Wherever intensive dairying has been discussed, it has usu- 

 ally taken the form of keeping a cow to an acre of land. What 

 is the meaning of a cow per acre? Absolutely nothing. This 

 brings us again to the same old misunderstood problem over 

 which dairymen have blundered. Many think that a cow is a 

 cow, and that ends it. We have had cows at the University of 

 Illinois, purchased from the dairy herds of the state, one of 

 which produced ten times as much milk and nine times as much 

 fat as another in a year. 



