The Green Forest tribune., 1915-01-29
FOR BETTER FARMING
Southern Farmer Urged to Adopt
 Diversification.
Department of Agriculture Gives Plan for Reducing Living Expenses by Growing Many Things Which
 the Family Needs.
tPrepared by the United States Depart
 ment of Agriculture.)

The secretary of agriculture in writ ing recently to cotton exchanges in the South, pointed out that the only really efficient way to prevent a re- currence of the crisis which the col lapse of the cotton market created was for the southern farmer to diver sify his agriculture. Hitherto the cash returns from a successful cotton crop have blinded many farmers to the proof of the old proverb that it is folly to put all your eggs in one basket. They have devoted all their land and all their time to the production of cotton, and have purchased their own SUD- plies at cost much greater than they could raise them themselves.
 The essential weakness in this prac- tice has long been apparent to agri- cultural experts, but their efforts to secure more diversity in farming have hitherto met with but little success. It is difficult to change habits of many years standing, and the man who has been accustomed to grow cot ton and only cotton is reluctant to remodel his own farm, even after he | has become convinced of the necessity of so doing.
 To help meet this situation, the United States department of agricul- ture has prepared a series of articles, ] of which this is the first, on the sub- ject of diversified farming in the South. These articles will treat of | the raising of produce for home con- sumption in vegetable gardens, potato patches. etc.; of such crops as corn, beans, peas and other legumes, which are both useful in themselves and may be made to enrich instead of impover- ish the soil; and of poultry, dairy products and live stock for home use and as a cash crop to serve as substitute, in part or in whole, for cotton
 By the adoption of diversified farm ing, the farmer may reasonably expect to achieve several important objects:
 1. He may very materially reduce his own living expenses by growing on his own land a great many of the things which his family needs and which he now purchases at the store, paying, of course, a profit to the re- taller and the middleman.
 2. He shosld save a very consider able proportion of his outlay oil fer tilizers by growing crops that add ni- trogen to the soil, and by keeping live stock to enrich it with manure.
 3. He should grasp the opportunity afforded by the increasing demand for meat of all kinds to turn large part of his crops into stock to be sold to slaughtering houses at a profitable price. He should place himself in position where his entire prosperity is not dependent upon the demand for any one article, when the strength of that demand is determined by circum- stances entirely out of his own con- trol. In other words, he should have more than one thing to sell All this seems very simple, but up to the pres ent time comparatively few farms in the South have been managed with these ends in view
 In a speech before the National Dairy Show association in October, 1914, the secretary of agriculture stat ed that the average Iowa farm has six milch COWS; the average South Caro- lima farm has one. In Iowa, the av- craze farm has 35 hogs; in North Carolina and Alabama, less than five; in South Carolina less than four. In poultry the difference is even greater. One hundred and eight is the average in Iowa; less than twenty in North Carolina and Alabama, and less than seventeen in South Carolina. The re- suits of one investigation show that In Georgia the average farm home produced less than two eggs a week, less than two-thirds of an ounce of butter, and two-thirds of a pint of milk day, and that the cotton crop of the entire South did not pay for it's food and feed bill. Thus it has been estimated that Texas imports annual ly more than s5o,0OO,OOO worth of wheat, corn and oats; Georgia more than $24,O00,000; South Carolina more than $20,000,000, and 12 southern states more than $175,O00,O0O. In ad- dition, more than s48,000,000 worth of meats, dairy and poultry products are imported each year.
 To do away with this condition of affairs is one of the chief purposes of diversified farming. It is not neces- sary for the South to compete in these crops with other regions in the open markets of the world but the home demand can be met by home production, and enough left over to form the basis of a very profitable stock raising industry.
 In this connection it is noteworthy that already 223,OOO square miles, or an area that is greater than that of Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Mis- sissippi added together, has been cleared of the cattle tick, and that if the work is continued at the same rate of speed. the whole country should be free of the pest within if. teen years. The cattle tick has. in the past, been one of the greatest