The Place For Cattle

Categories: STABLE MANURE

There are general trends in human practice that

cannot be changed by man. A change in human diet that makes the

percentage of meat lower will not come through propaganda, but there

are forces at work that will restrict the consumption of meat by the

individual. The increase in population makes heavier demand for food.

Armsby has shown that the fattening steer returns to man for food only

3 per cent of the energy value f the corn consumed by it, and in

pork-production this percentage scarcely rises to 16. This is the

reason meat-making animals give way before increase in population in

congested countries. Their office becomes, more and more, the

conversion of products inedible to man to edible products. In our

country their number will increase, doubtless, for a long period of

time, finding their places more surely on eastern farms rather than on

western ranches. They must find the cheaper land, and that is no longer

confined to the west. They must be where coarse materials, inedible to

man, are found, and that is on eastern as well as on western farms.

Their office will not be the conversion of crops into manure, but the

conversion of coarse materials into human food in the form of meat or

milk. This is the trend, and while the consummation may happily be far

in the future, its consideration helps us to an appreciation of the

facts regarding nature's provision for maintaining the productiveness

of the soil.