Will Introduce Soy Bean
The Fort Dodge Messenger: April 16, 1904
Will Introduce Soy Bean
It Is Said to Make a Good Crop for Iowa Farms.
Iowa City, April 16. – The soy bean which will be introduced into Johnson county this summer extensively as a soil renovator, is claimed by the men who intend to use it to have great value as a feed for stock. They claim that the plant may be fed as green fodder, hay or silage; or the beans may be fed in the form of meal. It serves admirably to balance the rations fed to stock. As a green fodder it is said that in many cases stock do not relish it at first, but gradually grow to like it. The bean is rich in nutritive material, and in Japan is used as a food by the people of the country.
It is said that the green plant is much richer than the green corn fodder and the ripe seed than the corn kernels. The advocates of the soy bean claim for it three things which make it worthy of the farmer. First, that it can draw much of its nitrogen from the air, in this way not proving to be a very exhaustive crop upon the soil; second, that the bean stubble and the roots seem to have more manurial value to the ground in which the corp is grown than those of corn. This makes it a still more valuable crop for the farmer who wishes to rest his land but does not like to lose the income that it should bring in annually. The third reason is that the ripe bean, being ripe in flesh formers, may take the place of such concentrated foods as cottonseed meal, linseed meal, gluten meal, etc.
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