The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1913-08-07

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or other. No commercial fertilizer
Of any kind has been used, except |
little cotton seed meal under the oats.
with the increased organic content
came corresponding increase in the
yield of cotton, so that after few
years the land was producing a bale
or more to the acre. By 1898 the soil
had become so rich that seven bales
were produced on the two acres, and
for several years the yield averaged
close to this mark. When it is remem-
bered that the average yield of cotton
in the south is but little more than
one-third of a bale per acre, these
Yields on the two acres are seen to be
fully ten times as much as the aver
age.
observations made in this work
soon taught this farmer that some of
the better plants were each producing
pound or more of lint, and from
this he concluded that with perfect
stand of plants of this high-yielding
capacity it would be possible to pro-
duce nine five-hundred-pound bales on
one acre. This, then, became the goal
at which he aimed, and he has been
striving to attain it ever since. While
he has not yet been able to produce
/ this quantity, he has succeeded in
growing a five-hundred-and-si
bale on measured one-eighth acre"
Thus, enthusiastically, the govern
ment bulletin describes a modern
! farming miracle. Eight bales to the
acre, when the best the most intelli-
| gent farmers can do with the most
/ fertile river land in the south is two.
But the wonder of this negro farmer
does not cease with his cotton crops.
While he is raising cotton at the
rate of three and one-half bales to the
acre he is making the same two acres
simultaneously produce two huge
crops of corn and oats-eighty bushels
of oats to each acre and eighty BUSH
els of corn. The Southern average
acre yield of corn is about fifteen
! bushels and that of oats about twenty
bushels. Thus the fertility of Nc
Calls two acres is such that they are
producing each season crops equiva-
lent to those produced on thirty-eight
average Southern acres.
| Mccall accomplished this by a
unique system of crop rotation. His
oats are grown intensively in rows
| five feet apart instead of being sown
! broadcast, and each row is as care
! fully cultivated by him through the
growing season as if it were cabbage
or potatoes. The result is that the
heads of oats are enormous in size,
and each plant produces many times
the quantity produced by plant in
field sown thickly with oats.
Mccall plants oats in the fall be-
tween the cotton stalks. In the spring
he goes through his patch and breaks
down the cotton stalks and plows them
under When the oats are knee high
he plants corn in rows five feet apart
and between the rows of oats. About
the time the corn is knee high the oats
are ready for harvesting. This is
done simply by cutting off the oat
heads, leaving the straw in the field.
Then the oat straw is plowed under
and the cotton is planted in rows be-
tween the corn rows. When the cot
ton is knee high it is harvest time for
corn. The ears Of corn are plucked
from the stalks, which are later
trampled by the cotton pickers and
finally plowed in when preparing for
the oat sowing in the fall.
Amazing as the crop records of Sam
McCalls two-acre farm are, their i'm
portance is nothing compared with
that of the bearing of his feat of bring
ing worthless land up to such fertility
upon the problem facing humanity at
the end of the ages-whether or not
the earth will cease to produce food.