132 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
The two-fold object of all regulated systems of farming is : 
1st. To make the earth yield the greatest possible amount 
and variety of products necessary or desirable for the suste¬ 
nance and comfort ot the human family, and 
2d. While doing this, to steadily increase the productive 
powers of the soil, or at least retain them undiminished. 
The second of these propositions appears to us incompatible 
with a mode of farming exclusively devoted to the raising of 
grain; because, as we have before remarked, it does not per¬ 
mit a sufficient number of animals to be kept on the farm for 
producing an amount of manure adequate to counterbalance 
the exhaustion caused by the grain crops. 
Even the man who carries on a sytem of mixed husbandry, 
is frequently at a loss how to dispose of his surplus straw. His 
cattle have access to his straw stacks; he beds them, as well 
as his stabled animals, with straw ; hauls straw to his pig pen 
and wherever he can spread it for the comfort of his stock ; yet 
there is frequently a large surplus which he finds difficult to 
convert into manure. Mark, that in this case, the farm does 
not need so much manure as a purely grain farm does; because 
a goodly portion being used for pasture in its term of rotation, 
is almost sufficiently enriched by that process alone; whereas 
the grain farm has no such recuperative process applied to it. 
Hot that we consider it impossible to raise cereals extensively, 
in fact to make the raising of grain the leading feature or in¬ 
terest, without destroying the productive capacities of the soil. 
We think it may be done to a certain extent, by a systematic 
and judicious feeding of the straw, particularly by cutting it 
up and mixing it with mill-stuffs to make it more palatable ; 
but in our opinion, this is a more expensive and less easjr way 
of maintaining the fertility of the soil, than by cultivating the 
grasses and consuming them on the farm in feeding and pas¬ 
turing. On the grain farm, the straw is too apt to be burnt 
upon the field that has produced it, or to find its way to the 
paper mill, being generally deemed an incumbrance. 
If we consider the land as it is bought from government, in 
its various conditions of timber, prairie, openings, marsh, and 
