DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



27 



not, is there someone to represent him? The next state is Kansas, sunny 

 Kansas, and the response will be made by Dean W. M. Jardine, Director of 

 Experiment Stations, at the Kansas Agricultural College. 



Kansas 



DEAN JARDINE: 



It will keep me going even to start to tell of some of the things that 

 the State of Kansas has engaged in agriculturally during the past 12 

 months, or since the last progress report was made to this organization. 



I will not devote any of the five minutes allotted me in calling to your 

 attention the extensiveness of our agriculture, because you all are aware 

 that Kansas plants 8 million acres to corn, 9 million acres to wheat, from 2 

 million to 3 million acres to sorghums, and over 1 million acres to alfalfa 

 every year. I would rather, and will, speak briefly of the work we are 

 engaged in in endeavoring to make these several acres produce larger yields 

 at a minimum cost, and with the least permanent cost in time, money, and 

 loss in soil fertility. 



The two big problems confronting us of Kansas, as in most other 

 states, are: (1) making every acre now under tillage more productive, not 

 only temporarily but permanently; (2) and bringing under profitable man- 

 agement all of the state's land, which is over 50 per cent of its total area, 

 which has never been brought under the plow. 



In the solution of either of these problems we feel that livestock must 

 play a very prominent part. We are using every bit of skill and energy 

 that we possess in trying to impress upon the farmers of Kansas the im- 

 portance of maintaining the fertility of their soils, physically and chem- 

 ically, and that the most economical method of doing this is by growing a 

 diversity of crops in the rotation, and feeding a large percentage of the 

 products of the soil to livestock on the farm so that a part of the fertility 

 taken from the land by the crops may be returned to the soil in the form 

 of manure. 



In western Kansas we are encouraging the growing of the sorghum 

 crops for forage and for grain. To encourage their use, we have conducted 

 feeding tests to determine the feeding value of these crops compared with 

 corn, either as silage, or as dry fodder, or as grain. 



At our Hays Branch Station, where we have under control over 5,000 

 acres of ground, we are carrying over 400 head of stock cattle of the four 

 main beef breeds. We are using these animals in feeding experiments of 

 a practical character. We have absolutely determined in the last two or 

 three years that silage made from the sorghums, either sweet or non- 

 saccharine, produces as economical gains as silage made from corn. 



We have also found through our deeding tests that where we have a 

 supply of silage, a succulent food, we are able to utilize straw as a rough- 

 age. In other words, we have found that we can bring stock cattle through 

 the winter in good, thrifty condition on a ration of silage made from the 

 sorghums, and straw, and a small amount of alfalfa or cottonseed cake, or 

 linseed cake. Such a ration for western Kansas is practicable, because the 



