The total amount of meat products exported from the United States in 1915 was 75,243,690 pounds, valued at over $900,000,000. In 1916 50,416,690 pounds valued at $780,000,000 were exported. Meat production is one of the leading industries of the farms in Iowa, Illinois, Mis souri, Indiana and Ohio. In fact wherever corn thrives there we find meat production an important industry. Corn is undoubtedly more largely used in meat production than any other feed. The problem of economic meat produc tion in the United States is largely a question of the best method of utilizing corn and its by products. There is a gradual and apparently necessary and certain change, just beginning, which will have an important bearing upon beef production in the United States. With the closing of many ranges in the range country Which have hitherto furnished a high percent age of stockers and feeders which have been finished on the corn belt, or at any rate upon corn Frown in the corn belt, the problem pre sents itself, where are cattle feeders to look for their future supply of feeding cattle? Every thing points to the conclusion that ultimately more of the cattle fatted for the market on the high-priced lands in the corn belt will be bred and reared there. In other words the entire
process of beef production will necessarily be carried on by the majority of cattle men. As it is, about 85 per cent of the native beef cattle marketed in Chicago have been previously bought as feeders and finished by cattle feeders who do not breed or rear the cattle they feed. The tendency in meat production at present is to put -livestock in marketable condition and market them at an earlier age. This system in volves better bred animals, more liberal feeding and a large use of nitrogenous feeds.
Douglas, tEncyclopadia of Meats' ; 'Meats: Composition and (U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin No. 34) ; Distribution of the Agricultural Ex ports of the United States 1897-1901 (U. S. of Agriculture, Section of Foreign Mar kets, Bulletin No. 29) ; Henry, 'Feeds and Feeding) ; Parloa, 'Home Economics); 'Mar ket Classes and Grades of Cattle' (University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station, Bul letins Nos. 78 and 90).
HEaszwr W. MUMFORD, Professor of Animal Husbandry, University of Illinois.