The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1899-02-25
FARMER PLANTER.
SHALL WE our COTTON :
Question that Is At Present OF Absorbing
Interest to the Planter OF the

boath. ~ -
We receive almost daily letters from
southern farmers asking us to. give d.
iections for the culture and treatment
OF the hemp CROP broom corn crop,
castor oil beans and even sunfiowers,
saying that they must have some
thing to take the place of cotton. They
would fly from the evils they KNOW to
those they nothing of. In other words,
they would abandon a-crep they are
familiar with and undertake the cul-
ture of one they know nothing about,
in the vain hope that they can get
something TO take the place of.eotton.
invariably tell them that they do not
need anything to take the place of cot
ton, for cotton has too long had too
much place. What they do want II
farming with cotton still as d leading
crop, but restricted to its proper part
OF the farm lands, and kept as one of
the crops in a rotation devised for the
improvement of the land for the pro-
duction of cotton, and more cotton per
acre, but of other crops as well. Time
and again we have submitted to our
farmers my ideas about cropping ro-
tation with cotton as chief money
crop, and here and there a man takes
hold of the idea and realizes that there
is money for him in crops that he has
only been accustomed to look upon as
supplies" He finds that as he inn
| proves his land that there is money in
corn even, and in oats us market crops,
and that when he raises large
amount of forage he can feed cattle
| prcfitably, and while doing this he can
raise manure at home and save the
| fertilizer bills to great extent. There
il not only no money in five-cent cot
ton for man who raises it in the or
binary way as sole crop, but there
is an absolute loss with fertilizer bill
hanging to the end of it.
Now do not think that am going to
join the crowd who abuse fertilizers
per Sc, for no one knows better than
those engaged in experimental work
the value of the chemical fertilizers
used on our farms. 1t is not the use
of the fertilizer we condemn, but the
method of the culture that makes the
cotton grower of the southeast states
dependent on an annual purchase of
somebody's brand of plant-food to get
a moderate crop. We would not have
our cotton growers either abanden
cotton or fertilizers on their lands.
But we would have them cultivate the
one and use the other in different |
manner. In fact, we would have !
them use fertilizers even more liberal |
~ than they now do, but ina differ
ent place. and of different sort and |
price. We have long been satisfied
that-the farmers of the south can save
half the cost of the fertilizers they
use. and at the same time use more |
than they now do. This seems rath-
err paradoxical, but ii is nevertheless |
the result of experience and observa
ton combined. For long years the
cotton farmers have been buying !coW
plete fertilizers to be used directly on
the cotton crop year after year. In
buying these complete fertilizers they
have been paying about half the price.
for the nitrogen they contain or are
said TO contain. With a proper rota-
ton of the crops. and the saving of
the homemade manure and the cot
tonseed, they need never buy an ounce
of nitrogen, while getting increasing
crops and improving their lands. With
the cost of the nitrogen taken out, the
same amount of money now spent for
fertilizers on the cotton crop would
procure double the amount of : the
mineral fertilizers that properly used
would tend towards the permanent
improvement of the land. How can
we do this, you may ask 1 have told /.
the same thing so often that 1 have
supposed that it was known to every