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Show I ' I - - - -W M-rH-IMi, I ... ... ........-p. i OifHalJpifeJ f taw Riga riiiili iiiiil k Froo tli3 Cs.ynti PkSA Committee . - - 'There's Gold in Them Thar Grass Rools' ! properly handled, grass and ipBumes may be the most prof-, prof-, table crops on the farm says rouB Bertoch. chairman of the o?l nuchesne County PMA commit- fee Grass and legumes produce ! economical feed. They increase i the yields of cropland. They re-'ab re-'ab store humus and organic matter to soils which have been sifted t I of these essentials by continuous continu-ous cash cropping. They protect the land against erosion. They help to heal the scars of erosion that" has already taken place. And they add to the income. But, too often, these worn out lands are left to shift for themselves, them-selves, the chairman said. The impoverished and eroded fields become the pastures on the farm and little is done to correct the I acidity of the soil or restore the needed minerals. To encourage the use of Agricultural Ag-ricultural Conservation program practices to improve pastures, the chairman 'cites the case of a farmer in Davis county, Mo. When he started to improve his 20-acre pasture it was badly eroded. Nature in a final attempt at-tempt to protect man from his own destruction' had shielded the land with a mass of brush and weeds. The pasture was plowed and fertilized in the fall of 1947 and seeded to alfalfa, brome grass and ladino clover in the fall of 1948. During the months April and May, 1949, 57 cows and yearlings were put on the pasture. They gained 2Vz pounds a day. At the end of May, 5 acres were cut for hay because the livestock was not keeping the pasture grazed sufficiently. Annual Inventory Shows Livestock Numbers Up. Livestock and poultry on farms and ranches showed a net increase during 1949 for the first time since January 1943, according to the annual January 1 inventory of live stock on farms recently issued by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Ag-riculture. The main features of the upturn up-turn were a 3 per cent increase in cattle and the first increase in milk cows since the decline started 5 years ago. Hog numbers num-bers were up for the second straight year. Chickens and turkeys tur-keys recorded gains. Sheep numbers num-bers continued the decline that started in 1942. The. number of horses and mules continued their downward trend. Abundant feed supplies and generally favorable prices for most livestock and livestock pro- ducts in relation to feed prices prompted increases in feeding operations and building up of breeding herds and poultry flocks. The outlook for feed production pro-duction was exceptionally favorable fav-orable during 1949, winding up with a near-record corn crop. |