The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1869-08-05
From the Charleston Neus.
Bread. Meat and Fodder.
CoKEsBURY, July ~,

much that interests the planter, induces
me to ask the insertion in your columns
of an article more appropriately designed
for On agricultural journal. AS a large
proportion OF your readers are planters
fsuggest for their consideration the fol-
lowing inquiry: Does eorn planting on
INLAND in South Carolina, or throughout
the South, (I mean the cotton belt OF
the South remunerate the planter!
A. negative reply comes this year from
all quarters, and the same will be the case
two years in three. The twency-acre
field Of upland, that will produce this year
ten bushels per acre, will be the eXcep-
tion; one-third of this goes to the freed
man, and the remaining two-thirds will
be consumed by wear and tear, black
smiths bills, interest, insurance, taxes,
and the mule. The planters profit will
be nothing. Then why do planters pre-
sist in cultivatng so exhaustive and still
so unremunerative crop? l can assign
no other reason than the one assigned by
tho boy who was asked, why he went to
mill with a bushel of meal in one end Of
the bag and rock in the other He re-
pfied, he did it because daddy did it.
Advising against growing upland corn,
am not an advocate for the cultivation
of cotton to the exclusion of forage and
provision crops. Not at all. Corn should
be grown more or less on all plantations,
but solely upon such lands as will pay
Best in corn. In my judgment there is not
labor enough in the South to glut the
market, were every acre OF cultivated
land planted in cotton. But it would be
rainous in more ways than one to pursue
snch a policy; breadstuffs would be en-
,hanced, and provender would become an
expensive necessity. The quantity OF
corn, however, consumed by man is but
an item in the products OF farm. 1t is
the stock that. are the costly consumers.
And the object of this article is to sug-
eest a method by which stock can be
more economically fed, labor more ad-
yaatageously employed, plantations i'm.
proved, and, withal, no corn cultivated
.upon uplands.
Any field capable of producing ten
bushels of corn per acre, will yield the
sane number of bushels of rye; and one
,buslrel of rye, ground into meal and made
into q. mash, with cut rye straw will
feed horse or mule much longer than
bushel of corn.
: The samo field sown in red oats, any
time between 1st October and 1st April,
will produce threshed oats enough Qhe
straw being salted and fed as fodder to
feed q number of animals one-half longer
than the corn and fodder from the same
field.
ANY piece of land, having an admix-
-ture Of clay in It's soil, sown in wheat in
November, and top dressed with ten dol
lars worth of commercial manures per
acre, any time between the lst February
and the list April following, will yield
wheat enough to pay for the manures,
bread the family, and buy the corn the
land would have produced
Any field manured at seeding-time with
ten dollars worth per acre ofeommorcial
manures, and sown in barley and again
tep-dressed as suggested above for wheat,
will produce grain enough to pay for the
,nanures, and buy twice as much corn as
the land would have produced without
manure.
ANY laborer that can cultivate six acres
of cotton and six of corn, can just as
easily cultivate ten acres of cotton and
eight acres of either of the cereals. :
These assertions are not made at ran
dom; they are the result of my own ex-
perience. And if these facts be true,
each planter has but to calculate for him.
self the difference in cost of seeding and
harvesting small grain crop, and of cul-
tivating corn crop. l may be met with
the remark that wheat and barley are too
costly 10 be fed to work animals. | re-
ply, if they are worth double in market
what corn is, and | can grow bushel of
either cheaper than / can bushel of
corn, they are less expensive feed for my
stock than corn would be. If their mar
ketable value would be greatly reduced
by being more extensively sown then we
would only be the happier people, be-
cause breadstutts would Le cheaper
For all small grain crops the land
should be thoroughly prepared as soon
after the lst October rs practicable, and
the grain brushed or narrowed in, not
ploughed in, and the land rolled. Har.
vesting should, if possible, be done with
reaper, not cradle. The best GRADER
will, in luxuriant small grain crop, in
spite of himself, lose from three to five
bushels per acre. If the land is properly
prepared, the reaper saves it all.
We're more extended area of thorough
ly prepared land upon all of our cotton
plantations sown in that small grain best
adapted to the respective plantations, we
could live more Independently, raise moro
stock, set our own price upon cotton, and
not be- 30 solicitous about labor. An in
telligent laborer accustomed to improved
machinery can cultivate more land and
harvest more grain than any half dozen
men who use the unoouth implements of
slavery times. AS a planter, feel that