Pasture Yield in Terms of Known Feed Equivalents, and Pasture in a Balanced System of Land Use

Abstract

The paper is a summary of observations made at the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station, Columbia, Missouri; the Soil and Water Conservation Experiment Stations, Bethany, Missouri and Guthrie, Oklahoma; and on the farm of E. C. Adams, Blue Springs, Missouri. Missouri land of 20–25 bushel per acre corn yield capacity at Columbia produced an amount of beef on pasture per acre that would have required the equivalent of as high as 43 bushels of corn in dry lot. Land of similar corn producing capacity at Blue Springs, Missouri produced pasture for dairy cows equivalent to as high as 2¼ tons of alfalfa hay per acre. Soil losses at the Bethany station were such that the surface 7 inches would be lost in 10 years of fallowing, 16 years of continuous corn cropping, 99 years of a rotation of corn, wheat, oats, and clover, or 4,000 years of a blue grass-timothy sod. Run-off of moisture was 31, 28, 15 and 9 percent respectively for the foregoing systems of land use. The surface 7 inches of soil at the Guthrie station would be eroded in 58 years of fallowing, 56 years of continuous cotton, 304 years of a rotation of cotton, wheat and sweet clover, or 700,000 years of grass, Bermuda and native. Run-off of moisture there was 27, 13, 10 and .03 percent respectively.