THIRTY-SIXTH ANNUAL CONVENTION. 375 



unless something goes wrong, and it is the business of agricul- 

 ture to learn how to feed them, and feed them well. We have 

 never gone up against such numbers as are just ahead. There 

 is to be, in the very near future^ a struggle for land and the food 

 it will produce, such as the world has never yet beheld. He who 

 knows where and how to look can see it coming. For us there 

 are no more new worlds. For us there is little more 'out west.' " 

 Our problem from now on is how to develop our own agricultur- 

 al possibilities from the land we now possess, and there is no 

 better way to do this than to devote a portion of it to dairy 



farming. 



Man Cannot Eat Grass and Fodder. 



The grain farmer contends that when this struggle for food 

 comes the live stock farmer will be forced out of business be- 

 cause animals are expensive producers of human food, for the 

 reason that they consume more digestible nutrients in their food 

 than they return in animal products for the support of man. 

 Those who hold this view fail entirely to realize that the larger 

 portion of the energy stored in our common farm crops is scarce- 

 ly more available for the sustenance of man than is the soil itself. 

 In the crops raised in the ordinary rotation necessary for the best 

 production of grain — corn, oats, wheat and clover, — less than 

 half of the total digestible nutrients contained in all these crops 

 is available for the food of man, as is shown in the table below : 



Division of Human and Animal Food in Our Common Crops. 



Yield per acre ,J^S^,^, For man 



Crop Not 

 Amt. Pounds Prot. Carbo Fat Total Avail avail- 

 able able 



Corn (grain) 55 bu. 3800 240 2054 132 2427 2427 



Corn stover 2 T. 4000 68 1296 28 ±372 .... 1372 



Wheat (grain) 25 bu. 1500 153 1038 26 1217 1217 



Wheat straw IT. 2000 8 726 8 742 742 



Oats (grain) 50 bu. 1600 147 757 67 971 971 



Oat straw 1600 1b. 1600 19 618 13 649 649 



Clover hay (red) 21/2 T. 5000 340 1790 85 2215 .... 2215 



4615 4978 



