The Lee County journal. (Leesburg, Ga.) 1904-19??, 1908-02-14
Dairy Education in the South.

Dairy education is making steady
progress in all sections Of the South,
though at the present time there is
no State which has developed the
dairy interests on a basis compare
BILE with that of Wisconsin and many
of the other Commonwealth Of the
Middle West. Conditions are so es-
sentially different between the South
and the Northwest that it is not diff
ficult for one who has studied the sit
uation to realize why dairy education
has not made greater progress in the
past. King Cotton is responsible in
large measure for less interest being
taken in dairying. Cotton is the
money crop OF the Southern farmer.
1t means everything to him; more
than the proverbial hog, which has
been aptly called the mortgage litter
on our Western farms. 1t is the one
great crop on which all the energy
and all the interest Of the South CEN
tres In Wisconsin, on the other
hand, the States prosperity is based
on dairying, and natural conditions
have had much to do with it's develop
ment, as the environment is not
adapted for growing cotton, and the
farmers had of necessity to turn their
attention to some other industry as
means of livelihood. From this state
ment it must not be gathered that
cotton growing and dairying are an
tagonistic, but natural environment
has much to do with determining the
relative position of an enterprise in a
given community. Nature has varied
our climate and soils so as to adapt
one section for one particular crop,
and another for some other form Of
agricultural activity.
The extensive cultivation of cotton
has occupied the public mind so COM
pletely that it has excluded the devel-
opment Of other enterprises which
might have been associated with it to
the immense benefit of the Southern
farmer. It is not SO long ago, in fact,
when the by-products of the cotton
plant were allowed to go to waste.
Any middle-aged man will tell you
that he recollects when the seeds
were regarded as nuisance. Before
the advent of artificial ice it was ex-
ceedingly difficult To handle milk and
other perishable dairy products salts
factorily or economically. There were
thus natural conditions to overcome
on the part of the farmer, which from
his point of view might easily have
seemed unsurmountahle. The marvel
Gus changes which science has made
in all fields of industry, however,
have shed new light on the dairy
mans problems, and has shown the
Southern farmer how he may now
engage in dairy enterprises with
profit and satisfaction, for ice may
now be made in his own dairy and
sold to his friends and neighbors
profitably, and it will not cost him
more probably than it does in the
North to harvest the natural ice and
store it.
Investigations in animal nutrition
have shown that cottonseed meal
stands unrivalled as a concentrate for
UdIduClnS the IdtlOH AUE IuG QstlIy
COW. The silo has made it possible
for the Southern farmer to have an
admirable substitute for grass at
those seasons of the year when blue
grass is not available in the Piedmont
section and when Bermuda can not
be depended upon throughout the
vast extent of the coastal plains re-
gion. These facts have been but re-
Gently realized by any considerable
per cent. of the people, but they are
rapidly awakening to the possibilities
which lie in front Of them when all
the aids which science brings to the
dairyman are adopted and utilized in
conjunction with climate and soil
which produce as great variety of
useful crops for the economic nutri-
tion of the dairy COW as can be grown
anywhere in the world. Professor A.
M. Soule.