The county record. [volume] (Kingstree, S.C.) 1885-1975, 1921-10-13
Possibilities in Peanuts.

Commenting editionally on recent
letter in The Manning Times, the
News and Courier says:
"Ihe Manning Times prints a very
interesting letter which has been writ
ten by Mr.. C. R. Sprott, of Manning,
to Mr.. C. C. Fishburnc, president of
the South Carolina Crushers Associa-
ton, at whose request Mr.. Sprott
spent several days Investigating the
peanut industry in South Georgia.
Mr.. Sprott is a highly intelligent and
thoroughly practical man. He talked
to farmers, oil mill managers and
superintendents, bankers and other
business men, travelling statesmen,
county demonstration agents and ex-
pertinent station workers, in Crisp
county, lifts county and to limited
extent in Brooks county and his letter
tc Mr.. Fishburne summarizes the i'm
preSsions which these conversations
made upon him. He declares that in
stead of having decided on a definite
farming program, as he and most 9TH
ers believe to be the case, the Geor-
gia farmers in the section he visited
"are just about as unsettled in re-
gard to their future operations as
the farmers in Eastern South Caro-
lima" They are still hoping that
some method will be devised for the
control of the weevil and most of
them are still planting cotton, not as
much cotton as they planted before
the weevil came, but ah average of
something like twelve to fifteen acres
to the plow. The cotton yield in Crisp
county has been cut under boil weevil
conditions from $4,000 bales to $500
bales last year, with the present crop
estimated at 5000 bales.
Mr.. Sprott thinks that at SOS G ton,
the price at which peanuts were SELL
ing when he was in Georgia, the farm
erS make more on peanuts than on
20 cents cotton with the present yields.
Nevertheless one farmer, who plants
some 400 acres of. cotton and $50 acres
of peanuts, told him that he preferred
cotton because it was so much less
trouble. when l tell one of my
hands to put on a sixtecn-irch scrape
and plow a certain field two burrows
to the row, he knows exactly what l
mean for him to do, but l have to go
in the field and show him how to
cultivate my peanuts and when gath
ering time comes | have to stay IN
the field all the time to get the work
done properly" Mr.. Sprott reports
this large planter as saying. Mr..
Sprott was advised that the smaller
farmers in spite of everything are
planting more than twice as large an
acreage of cotton as of peanuts, the
average acreage in peanuts being
about five acres to the plow.
The conclusion of MIR. Sprott was
that the Georgia farmers in the coun-
ties he visited have not made an ef-
fort to familiarize themselves with
the best methods of peanut growing
and that the yield could be very great
ly increased, probably doubled. AT
present the peanuts are planted with
out any lime or fertilizer whatever
and yields are low, in Crisp county
the average yield being ton to three
acres, and in lifts and Brooks coun-
ties about a ton to two acres, the soil
of lifts county being better than that
of the others. Mr.. Sprott heard OF
individual farmers who made eighty
bushels of Spanish peanuts per acre
and he saw a field near Cordele which
made three-quarters of bale OF cot
ten per acre in 1919 and IS bushels
or approximately a ton,of peanuts in
1920 without any fertilizer OF any
Kind The bankers and business men
of Georgia, not sharing the hope OF
the farmers that cotton may come
back, belive, Mr.. Sprott says, that
the peanut will eventually prove to
he the salvation of the country. II
is pointed out very significantly that
not withstanding the drop in the prlcs