Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1917-05-08

anu CLUES DIS UPON Tic puSiucSS UleH
who operate our Georgia farms
whether as landlords or tenants.
Diversified Farming No New Thing in
Theory.
Diversified Farming, which is moth
ing less or more than is now the press
ing need of Georgia, has for long
time been the dream of all persons in
terested in the economic development
OF the South. l should say that for at
least forty years we have needed crop
diversification as a means of giving
stability to Southern farming. Things
had become noticeably bad in the late
eighties, when the patriotism and elo-
duence of Henry w. Grady (soon to be
cut down in the splendor of his young
manhood) found timely expression not
only along national but along sectional
lines as we'll.
I am not one who would blame the
farmers of Georgia and the South ex
clusively with what has evidently been
stupendous folly, the production OF
cotton as sole money crop and to
the gross neglect of foods, feedstuffs
and livestock. Every resident OF
town and city throughout Georgia and
the South has been a party to the un-
ecomic regime complained of. All
have been inert, and those farmers and
those business men of town and city
who have energetically worked for the
needed change have been all too few.
It is now up to the whole of our Geor-
gia citizenship to work together for
remedying an evil that all have, I'M
consciously perhaps, fastened upon
us.
How glorious an opportunity we
now have to address ourselves unitedly
TO a common task which makes double
appeal to all that is within us by
reason of its coincidence with the pat
riotic demands of the hour! How hap
nv. too, to reflect that the invasion of
the boil weevil at this time gives
double assurance that whatever of
crop diversifcation and livestock pro-
duction we now achieve in Georgia can
probably be regarded as permanent
acquisitions.
1t is by supplying educational and
moral support, financial succor, fac
ilities for storing and conserving farm
products and the orderly and profitable
marketing of same, that the business
men of our towns and cities can per-
form for the State and Nation at this
time service as great in volume as
can be rendered by the persons who
shall actually conduct farm operations
aong lines approved under the present
conditions of stress.
Cotton Versus Foods and Feedstuffs.
Let us consider for moment, the
nearest approach to acondition com
parable to the present as regards the
need of food production in Georgia.
refer, of course, to the fall and winter
of 1914-1915, when almost the entire
cotton crop of the South was disposed
of by the farmers at considerably less
than the actual cost of producing it
Indications all pointed to high priced
food and feedstuffs the following year
and the farmers of Georgia were urged
on every hand to diversity their crops
most literally. The result / shall try
to briefly chronicle in the following
paragraphs.
While cotton sold for fair prices in
the fall of 1915. with usually good
market facilities attending land
might add that it was only for two OF
three months in the fall of 1914 that
the cotton marketing machinery failed
to function normally, ana tnat ds ie'
suit of acute disturbance of ocean
freights soon after the beginning Of
the so-called European War;, it can
not be aid that there we're fair markets
for other Georgia products. The un.
willingness of the Georgia farmers tc
plant food crops extensively this
year can be traced in a majority Of
cases, perhaps, to unsatisfactory ex-
perences had in the marketing of such
products in 1915 and in previous years
Although corn, oats and hay were in
demand and at good prices during the
fall and winter of 1915-1916, with few