St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1889-08-03
Rice Culture.
FARMING VERSUS PLANTING.


In Southwestern Louisiana the above
contest has begun. The farmer has come
from the bleak Northwest to the sunny
do, he brings with him all his thrifty
habits and money saving expedients. The
farmer raises his own hogs, sheep, cattle,
chickens, corn, oats, and in fact ali he can
to make his new home self. sustaining and
then raises, besides, some crops for sale,
and chief among these is rice.
The Iowa farmer in Calcasieu, Acadia
or St. Landry is taught by his early train
ing to first provide tor his family from his
farm, so far as he can, all that is needed
to eat, to drink and to wear, and this done,
to produce some additional crop or crops
for sale.
His domestic establishment thus becomes
Independent, self-sustaining in fact, in
thousands of cases the sales from the dairy
and poultry yard realize more than enough
to clothe and feed the family, and the
other crops may be sold to pay debts or to
enlarge the farm. This is farming, and
these people have taken up the culture of
rice as crop produced to sell, and they
find that even with the low prices prevail
ing for rice in Louisiana, they can do bet
ter with rice culture than with other grain
culture here, and better than they were
able to do with grain culture in the West.
The production of rice in Southwestern
Louisiana is thus large and increasing,
and the increase is on this solid basis 1t
is surplus crop, and whether the price be
great or small, it is just that much added
to the farmers revenues.
Those great prairies and the immense
rainfall suggest immense increase in the
production of rice in Southwestern Louis
lana in the near future.
Now to rice planting. The rice planter
owns or rents land capable of ready irri-
CATION from the ordinarily high river. He
may have plows, mules or oxen, and some
other necessary TOOLS He has no money
and no seed rice, and as our rice country
is extremely healthful, he has large
family, and they begin to eat food and
wear clothes, Jan. / of every year; and
the first duty of the average rice planter
is to find some way to pay his bills from
Jan. l, and those bills cover every need of
civilized life.
Here lies the difference between farming
and planting. All the ordinary wants of
life are supplied with the home produc-
lions of the farmer; none or scarcely any
of them are so supplied by the planter.
The business of the planter is carried on
intensely, as is that of great factory. The
whole thought of the manager is concen-
trated on the economic production of one or
but few articles, and they for sale.
| The business of the farmer is to supply
his family with its needs for its support
directly from the farm and then the excess
may be sold and the returns applied to
taxes, mortgages, education, culture and
amusement as may seem proper.
With large masses of low grade labor
planting is possible without large masses
of such labor planting is impossible, and
farming is the result.
Farming is the safe way, the intelligent
way, and is sure to win in the long run !;
and now that the farmers of Iowa have
come to Louisiana. and are finding it here
incomparably easier to surround them
selves with all the comforts of home life
than in their old Northwestern homes and
crop one of the great planting crops of
lower Louisiana, the question now becomes
a serious one as to what the planters of
this great crop, the rice crop, will do
about it.
The large production of rice in Louisiana
has unquestionably greatly cheapened its
price for the whole country, and the large
ness of the Louisiana production has its
most important factor in the increase that
comes from Calcasieu.
What that outcome will be we are not
prepared to say, but the best method wins,
usually, and it would seem that the rice
farmer will win, and that the rice planter
will have to mend his ways, buy no more
milk, butter, eggs, meat, corn, hay, ETC.,
| Init rather have all those for use and
surplus for sale, and then the rice crop can
bs held in the granary until the glut of
the market is passed, or until the prices
are satisfactory, or until other uses for the
money value seem more desirable. Shall
we not then bid the planter sad, but affec
tionate adieu, and welcome with cheerful
greeting the incoming farmer 2-Louislaaaa
Planter.