Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 151, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1913 — REASON FOR GROWING BEEF CATTLE IN INDIANA [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

REASON FOR GROWING BEEF CATTLE IN INDIANA

By C. F. GOBBLE, Department of Animal Husbandry, Purdue University Bchool of Agriculture, y Purdue University Agricultural Extension.

Just at this time there are a great number of farmers in Indiana asking themselves these questions, “Can I grow beef cattle at a profit?” “Shall I go into the business?” There are a great many things to be considered in answering these questions. -Taking a general view of things as they exist today, we may consider the prospects for making money in beef cattle as favorable. To be sure, land is high and feeds are fairly high, but beef is high as well. Cattle feeders the past winter have made money. Breeding cattle are selling high. It takes money to start in the business, but the indications are that it will be a long time before beef cattle prices will come down. There Is a shortage of beef cattle that is world-wide in extent. Today, Indiana has a smaller number of beef cattle than at any time in the past ten years. On Jan. 1, 1913, according to government figures, she had only 586,000 head and was exceeded in numbers by eighteen other states. The following table, taken from the United States Department of Agriculture Year Books, gives the number of beef cattle in this state and her rank as compared with other states of she Union;

Number of Date. Standing, beef cattle. Jan. 1, 1903.... 17th state.... 913,860 Jan. 1, 1904.-...17th state.... 895,583 Jan. 1, 1905....14th state.... 985,141 Jan. 1, 1906....10th state... .1,201,872 Jaa. 1, 1907... .13th state.... 1,141,778 Jan. 1, 1908... .13th state... .1,096,000 Jan. 1, 1909. ...13th state.,. .1,052,000 Jan. 1, 1910....13th state... ,1,020,000 Jan'. 1, 1911.... 16th state.... 744,000 Jan. 1, 1912... .19th state.... 702,000 Jan. 1, 1913... .19th state.... 686,000 A glance at this table shows a steady decrease in numbers from Jan. 1, 1906, to Jan. 1, 1913, a decrease of 4.5> per cent, in seven years. During the year of 1910 alone there was a drop of 27 per cent. It is evident that Indiana is not holding her own in beef production. She is not only decreasing in her numbers, but she is not keeping up with the other states. She has. dropped in rank from 10th place in 1906 to 19th in 1913. Now this state of affairs is not due to a lessening in productive ability of Indiana farms, nor to less chance for making money with beef cattle during this period, for, taken as a whole, these have been prosperous years in the cattle business. It is simply due to the fact that cattle have been selling so high that every one sold everything that would make beef in ordek tq take advantage of high prices. Causes of High Prices. Supply and demand, of course, largely regulate the price of any product. Values are. placed on meat in

England, the meat market of the world. Up to the present time, prices received for our export beef have regulated prices for meat consumed at home. Thiß year there is no export trade. oA* home consumption has overtaken our home supply. We are short on beef. The past ten years while the ranges have been breaking up into grain farms, and during a drought in the west the past two years, and while our corn belt farmers have been sellfhg everything that would make beef from the farm, causing a shortage of 4 per cent in beef, our population has increased 25 per cent. - _ The cause of high prices for beef is due to a shortage in not only the United States, but over the entire world. Argentine, the only country that has any great beef export trade, has a tendency to increase her grain farming,’rather than her stock growing. Men who have visited that country say that the beef business is at a standstill. England can easily use all that Argentine can supply. Many men have been afraid that removing our import duty on beef will cause such an influx into this country that our producers will be put out of business. Other mep claim that this is impossible. It certainly seems highly improbable when we remember that there is a world’s shortage of beef, that the ship lines run to England and not td the United States from Argentina, and that the American is a fastidious person who is used to eating fresh meat. We are considered a meat eating nation, but it would certainly give us a •severe test to have to eat meat fattened on alfalfa, killed and frozen in South America and shipped across the equator’ to our ports. These conditions, along with the generally considered advantages from growing beef animals on the farm, such as consumption of roughage, conservation of soil fertility, ease of marketing farm produce, distribution of labor, etc., should, I think, be sufficient inducement for a man of average ability, on the average rolling farm of Indiana, to go into the business.