The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1899-12-16
FARMER AND PLANTER.
CROP DIvERsIFIcATION.
The Boundless Possibilities of the
Soil of Texas the Small Farm
er's Opportunity.

Texas is peculiarly adapted to stock
farming. When cotton seed, corn,
oats, rye. barely, all the sorghums,
saccharine and non-saccharine, alfal-
ia and other forage plants, grasses OF
a hundred varieties, annual, biennial
and everlasting sweet potatoes, beets,
turnips, peanuts, artichokcs and other
feed and forage crops too numerous to
mention can be grown in great guam
titles and at little expense by reason
of the adaptability of cur rich prairie
soils to the use of labor-saving imple-
ments, what does the fact indicate!
These are all valuable food stuffs for
live stock, and all that is wanting to
make farming profitable to the farmer
is animals to consume the crops by
converting them into concentrated hui
man food. The inherent powers of the
soil are set at naught and labor is
scuandered recklessly when these pro-
dnctive resources are neglected. Farm
ers are the salt of the earth, but salt
that has lost its SAVIOR if they do not
utilize the opportunities they possess.
We have stated before, and wish we
could shout it into the ears of every
farmer in the land that there is not
and never was profit in growing crops
and selling them in crude state to be
utilized by others. With the one ex-
ccption of specialists, propagating and
growing special high-priced products
requiring special skill, the above state
ment is strictly true. To state the
same fact in other words is to say that
the only profitable general system of
farming is stock farming. The range
cattle kings are proclaiming this truth,
though it lies athwart their industrial
system. And the range cattle kings
are gradually drifting into stock farm
ing as far as their conditions will per-
nit. But we are more directly inter
ested in the farmers-the comparative
IN small farmers-who can not run a
combined agricultural and mercantile
business and make their large planta-
tions yield per cent. interest as do
the class known as cotton planters"
Small farmers feed and clothe the
world and are destined to be the beef,
pork, butter, cheese and poultry rails
ers of the world. Population is in
creasing and the soil being limited in
amount must be utilized to the best
advantage. Soon this will become i'm
pcrative. Large plantations producing
to half their capacity will not meet the
emergency. Nothing will meet it but
small farms in vast numbers, worked
to their full capacity by the steady in
cal men who take pride in their hold
ings. Texas has for many years been
noted for her vast herds of cattle,
raised on free grass at the rate of one
head to twenty-five acres. What a
wceful waste this indicates. The aver
age 100 acre farm can grow four times
as many and feed ten times that num-
Der per acre. Some of the western
states have produced more than 1,000,-
COG pork hogs in a year. If Texas
farmers would give the same attention
to hogs she would butcher or sell S.
100000. These hogs at 200 pounds
each and cents per pound Cess than
the dNerdyc weight anu pIiSSJ WOuiu
bring the farmers s40,o0o,0O0, or near
~ as much as full crop of cotton,
and besides, to grow these hogs and
these beeves, though it might somewhat
reduce the cotton crop, the crop would
bring as much money to the farmers as
q crop not so reduced. The correct
plan for diversifcation of crops is to
produce feed and stock to eat the feed,
raise a convenient amount of cotton,
and sell to the best advantage all sur
plus. taking special care to produce ev-
crything possible that the family or
farm animals can consume, describing
as utterly untenable the old and grim
joke that farmer can buy anything
he can produce cheaper than he can
produce it. Here is an axiom that ev-
cry farmer should base his business
on: Buying takes money ont of his
pocket; selling puts money into it,
Texas Farm and Ranch.