The Bossier banner., 1892-03-03
FARMER AND PLANTER.
SELF SUPPORTING FARMS.
Parting Words From an Experienced Ag-
ricGltural WFite~

IarCinH w OENS HS
ricGItural Writer
send you my last communication |
ever expect to write as an agricultural
writer, as age and health warn me my
work is nearly at an end. l can say
my work is done, having been farmer
for fifty seven years. The advice and
admonitions | have given our farmers
ever since the year 1868, | will repeat
and that was to make your farms self
supporting and self-sustaining, and
live off the products of your
own farms and become indepen-
dent of others supporting you
The long experience of our farmers
should convince them of the correct
ness of such advice, for the system our
farmers have pursued in making all
cotton and no provisions, has been an
error that has built up our Cities
towns, railroads and other industries at
the expense of the farmers. Whilst
others have been made rich, the farm
ers have remained poor and dependent.
and it will thus continue until we
change our system, and make our farms
self-supporting and maintain ourselves
This vast wealth that has built up the
south since the war, that has amazed
the world, has been chiefly the product
of the plow, the work of the farmers.
and out. of that wealth but a pittance
has been retained by the farmers
merely a scant living. No money has
been realized by them, debt was their
portion, whilst others became prosper
GUS, and received all the benefits of the
farm. Should not such an experience
convince the farmers of their error, and
induce them to change their methods
and system of farming? l was the first
writer that tried to convince them of
their error through the agricultural
journals. Now, | see it is the effort of
those journals to persuade them to do
so, but it seems all in vain. You may
persist in this cotton system, but the
more you try it the worse it will be for
those who continue in so doing. There
is but one remedy, and that is, diversity
your crops. Grain, grass and stock must
be raised, as well as cotton, and sup
port yourselves from your own farms,
and make your cotton your money
crop. Let all your food supplies
come from your own FARMS and stop
buying them. That is the way farming
should be done to make farming pay.
1t will pay in no other way; then your
cotton money will be your own, and
you can be improving your own farms
instead of letting the merchants have it
to build up their cities and towns, az
has been the case ever since the war.
We have a country, our south, that pro-
duces all the cereals, and the best of
grasses raises as fine horses, cattle,
sheep and hogs as any other part of the
United States. So, why h"y from others
what we can raise ourselves, and raise
them rs cheap as they can do? Besides
raising cotton, rice and sugar as our
money crops, we possess the soil and eli
mate to make us the most tself-sustaining
and most independent people in the
world would we only avail ourselves of
our advantages and opportunities TO do
so, and why not do so? Why so blind
to our interest and welfare when it is in
our power to make ourselves the richest
and most independent farmers on the
face of the earth? This has been the
advice have been giving to our south
ern farmers since the year 1868, and
often repeated, and in the last commu-
nication | ever expect to write, l repeat
1T again. One more word Farmers,
encourage your sons to become farm
ers. 1t is the most honorable, useful
and independent vocation one can be
engaged in, and if properly managed
and conducted, it will not only af-
ford competent and independent
living, but the safest and surest of all
avocations. The drawbacks, failures
and discouragements that have attend
ed farming for the last twenty years
have not been in the vocation, but in
the errors made in farming, in pursuing
the one cotton system of farming, and
in not diversifying the crops The fault
has been with the farmers and not with
the farms. Reformation is all that is
necessary to make it one of the most
pleasant, independent and safest occu-
pations that men can be engaged in.
With my long experience and observa
tions in life, had l my life to live over
again, l would choose farming again as
my occupation.-Joh II. Dent. in
Southern Farm.