Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1917-09-11
Aiaddin'S Lamp in a Peanut.

- LLHLp EIL ~ C%HN
writer in the Manufacturers Record tells
with interesting and well-substantiaed details how
a single crop of peanuts is paying for three hun
dred and ffty-acre farm. This tract of land, To-
Gated few miles from Jay, Florida, near the Ala
bama line, was not cleared until last March. The
following month it plowed and planted in pea
nuts. Three hundred and twenty are in one
field" says the writer, and it stretches away for
miles, solid mat of green" Every plant that he
inspected, he says. had from cup to a cup and
half of nuts which were full to capacity. On an
estimate of only half cup to the STEM however
the crop will average more than one hundred bush
els to the acre. Last year peanuts sold for dol
lar a-bushel and authorities say that dollar and
quarter a bushel for the 1917 crop is conservative
estimate From carefully kept records, the produc-
tion this particular farm is computed to be
fifteen dollars and fftyfve cents acre. to which
is added nineteen dollars and forty cents an acre for
harvesting and delivering. Thus the total expense
per is about thirtyhve dollars If, therefore,
the minimum of reasonable expectation is realized
and a dollar a bushel is obtained for one hundred
bushels to the acre, there will be net profit of
sixty-ve dollars acre. cor nearly twice what the
land sold for.
The larger significance of this example lies in
the fact that there thousands of acres of such
land in the Southeast and on the Gulf-in Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, as we'll as in
Florida In regions once given over exclusively to
cotton peanut crops particularly valuable in re-
storing plant food to the depleted soil. They are
valuable also in connection with animal husbandry,
and they fit easily into system of crop rotation.
But, as the writer in The Manufacturers Record
points out, the peanut-growing industry is of
prime Importance as a source of food supply Seven
years ago the entire country's output of peanuts
was valued at twenty-eight million dollars. Last
year Texas crop alone brought twenty-eght million
dollars The permanence of this expansion is
sured by the extraordinary amount of nutrition
tanned in peanut oil. In pound of peanut butter,
we are told there is more food value than the av-
erage three meals a day." On this point the CORE
spondent of the Manufacturers Record observes:
No one. of course expects mankind to give
up grits and oatmeal and vegetables and beef
steak and bread and pudding to put them
selves on a peanut diet, but we learn more
about food properties, it becomes more nee
essary to get the greatest amount of nourish-
ment and pleasure from our marketing allow
ance the demand for peanut butter will be in
creased and other products developed. Then
peanut meal or cake is a splendid stock feed,
especially for young animals, dairy cattle and
hogs The cake is better than the whole nut,
because with the oil extracted the flesh pro-
duced is firm and the lard as high grade
that produced by corn. Not only is peanut
cake better than the whole nut, pound for
pound, but one pound of the latter will buy
two of the former. Thus for the simple gath
ering and hauling to market the farmer dou-
bles his crop.
Georgia has especial to be interested in
the Florida example, because in the new era of d.
versiied farming and stock raising upon which our
State is entering the peanut crop will prove
highly valuable. That Georgia is in no wise
backward in this respect is evidenced by the ex-
tensive cultivation of peanuts in number of coun-
ties and by the steady increase in mills for produc
ing peanut oil and by-products. This industry al
ready has reached important proportions, and is
sured of still rapid growth in the ahead