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.