WILL MORE FORAGE PAY? 31 



bushels in amount of com sold and an increase of 1,450 bushels in 

 quantity of oats marketed. By reducing acreage planted to corn, the 

 farmer would work a few less hours under plan 4 than he is now work- 

 ing. Hours of tractor use. too. would be reduced slightly tinder the 

 green-manure cropping program. The important advantage of the 

 use of sweetclover would be the establishment of a more permanent 

 system of farming. 



A 225-ACRE GENERAL FARM OF THE CENTRAL CORN BELT 



Many farms of the Corn Belt are not organized to specialize in 

 production of a single, or a related group of products such as cash 

 grains. Rather, they are built around a number of enterprises, each in 

 itself only a small part of the over-all organization. Farms of this 

 kind are found in parts of the Corn Belt that have more rolling topog- 

 raphy and soils of lower inherent fertility. One farm of this kind is 

 located a few miles from a medium-sized industrial city of the Mid- 

 west. It is a "rough" farm with timber -oils that have been heavily 

 used. Some gullies have formed and are growing. Building- are old. 

 Many service buildings have passed their usefulness and need to be 

 rebuilt if livestock is to be kept. Good soil-management programs 

 have been started from time to time in recent years, but they were not 

 carried through on a continuing basis. However, limestone and phos- 

 phates applied at these times have solved the decline of soil fertility 

 and they make it simpler to establish higher-yielding grasses and 

 legumes today than would otherwise be the case. 



The production plan now followed on the farm places about equal 

 emphasis upon crop sales and sales of whole milk in the nearby city. 

 Sales of livestock are of lesser importance. The cropping program 

 stresses grains : only a fourth of the cropland is in grasses and legumes. 

 This is shown by data listed for the present production plan in table 8. 



Because of the physical characteristics of this farm and its location 

 within the milkshed of a thriving city, it appears that a production 

 plan built around the heavy use of forages through dairy cows would 

 be highly efficient (fig. 3). At the same time, somewhat more hogs 

 could be raised to utilize corn produced on the farm. To establish a 

 production plan of this kind, a 4-year rotation of corn. oats, and 2 

 years of a bromegrass-alfalfa mixture would be set up on 12s acres 

 of the 145 acres of cropland. The remaining 17 acres of cropland — 

 land adjacent to "draws" and land of quite steep slope — would be 

 seeded permanently to a bromegrass-alfalfa mixture and renovated 

 about every 4 years. The 45 acres of permanent pasture would be used 

 without renovation. Annually, 21 tons of limestone. 5io tons of super- 

 phosphate, and 2 tons of commercial fertilizer of n-14-6 analysis 

 would be applied. Limestone and commercial fertilizer would go on 

 corn ground: superphosphate on oats ground. The per acre yield of 

 corn would be increased from 35 to 45 bushels, that of oats from 30 

 to 40 bushels, and that of grass-legume hay from 2 to -Ji L » tons. 



Livestock for this production plan — plan 2 of table 8 — would consist 

 of 10 brood sows producing only spring pigs. 25 milk cows, with 

 replacements raised on the farm, and a laying flock of loo hens. The 

 dairy herd would be grade animals of dairy breeding producing an 



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