THE DRY FARMING ^CONGRESS. 



35 



DISCUSSION. 



By C. C. Williams, of Colorado: 



"Mr. Chairman — If Western Kansas is anything like Eastern Colo- 

 rado, and I do not understand that God made the state lines, the gentle- 

 man from Kansas has in part answered his own question. 



Soil Fertility. 



"We in eastern Colorado have found that, to maintain the fertility 

 of our soils in the face of constant cropping, we must feed everything 

 that we raise. The growing of small grains for market to the exclusion 

 of other crops has not been found to be a commercial success in our 

 country, figuring only from the basis of cost and of gross returns. At 

 • the same time the practice results in removing from the land a greater 

 quantity of necessary nutriment than is even dreamed of by many 

 of us who are today working the virgin, virile soils of the great West. 



Live Stock Profitable. 



"On the other hand, the process of stock feeding means that, proper- 

 ly handled, you utilize all your waste, you market only the finished pro- 

 duct, thereby retaining for yourselves the profit on the crop as well as 

 that on the stock you feed; you send your crops to market on the boof, 

 thereby reducing your freight rates five to one; and, best of all, you re- 

 turn to the land practically 75 per cent of the crops you raise, in the 

 form of manure. Carry on your land every head of stock that you can 

 raise feed for; buy feed, if necessary, rather than sell it; grow only 



Crop Rotation. 



enough wheat to fit in with a crop rotation system suitable to your soil 

 and climate; make some form, of leguminous crop a part of that rota- 

 tion; feed your land continually and consistently with manure and you 

 will never lose soil fertility. 



MONTANA. 



Dr. W. X. Sudduth, of Billings, responded for Montana: 

 "Ladies and Gentlemen and Fellow Delegates to the Trans-Missouri 

 Dry Farming Congress — Your Executive Committee has laid upon me 

 rather a large task. How large, those of you who are not acquainted 

 with the state of Montana cannot realize. When you come to consider 

 that its boundary along the Canadian line is 570 miles, and that from 

 the Wyoming line to the Canadian line is 300 miles, and that it in- 

 cludes an area of better than 145,000 square miles, approximately over 

 93,000,000 acres, you can see what a task I have today to represent the 

 entire state. Now let me compare this a little further. Ninety-three mil- 

 lion acres of land! Why, it would take Indiana. Illinois, Iowa and a 

 goodly portion of Maine to fill up the boundary lines of the state of 

 Montana. We have a large mountainous area, and after deducting the 

 so-called mountainous portions, we have yet left an agricultural portion 

 that is as large as the state of Iowa, and I know that state from one 



