Sales Off The Farm

Categories: STABLE MANURE

The day is now here when the major portion of

human food must be provided in grain and vegetables and fruit, and the

demand for hay and grain for animals off the farm is very large. Fiber

products likewise must be supplied. The draft upon the soil is heavy,

but it must be good farm practice to supply bread and vegetables and

fruit to the 70 per cent of our population that is not on farms. The

great majority of farmers o not feed all their crops to livestock, and

the amount of food-stuffs, for human beings and animals, that is now

going off the farms is none too great.



Many farmers who incline to believe that they are safely guarding

fertility by feeding the most of their crops are not returning to the

fields one third of the plant-food that their crops remove. There is no

virtue in feeding when the manure is permitted to waste away. The

losses in stable and barnyard, the wastes from bad distribution by

animals, and the sales from the farm of some crops, animals, and milk,

lead to the estimate that one half of the farms on which livestock is

kept do not give to the fields in the form of manure over 30 per cent

of the fertility taken out of them by crops. This estimate, for which

no accurate data is possible, probably is too high. The sales of food

for man and animal are a necessity, and the scheme of farming involving

such sales is right, provided the farmer makes use of other supplies of

fertility. The area devoted to such sales will grow greater because

human needs are imperative. Livestock will become more and more a means

of working over the material that man cannot eat--the grass, hay,

stalks, by-products in manufacture, and coarse grains. The demand for

meat and milk will lead to careful conversion of material into this

form of food, and the animals on eastern farms will increase in number

for a time, while sales of grain and vegetables grow greater. The draft

upon soil fertility through sales must increase because every pound of

material sold from the farm carries plant-food in it.