The Chesterfield advertiser. [volume] (Chesterfield C.H., S.C.) 1884-1978, 1922-03-02
By James A. Hollomon
printed by permission Atlanta Con-
stitution)

that even here, where the boil weevil
is comparatively new problem, there
are few progressive farmers who
have learned to master him under
normal crop conditions. Terrell coun-
ty, to illustrate, made more cotton to
the acre cultivated in 1921 than in
any year since the weevil became a
menacing infiuence-and the reason
again further accentuates the fallacy
of attempting to grow the staple un-
der the old system of large acreage
and slow cultivation.
"A great many southwest Georgia
farmers, as yet inexperienced, have
continued to believe that the weevil
would pass on after period of three
of four years, and have continued to
plant cotton to their old-time pre-
weevil acreage, plant the same way,
fertilize the same way, cultivate the
same way,and the result has been that
where one up-to-date, aggressive far
mer has grown cotton successfully the
past two or three years by applying
the rules of reason, scores of others
under the same climatic influences
farming the same kind of soil, have
fallen by the wayside, scarcely max
ing bale to a plow in many in
stances.
This latter result has not been due
to la2iness or to indifference--al-
though there are lazy and Indifferent
people in every line of industry who
refuse to apply brain and Drawn to
overcome any crisis-but it has been
due to either lack of understanding
as to how to farm under boil weevil
in the cultural rules brought to us
from the southwest, where it took
long years of warfare to learn the les
son of cultural strategy in meeting
the invader on the fields of battle.
Southwest Georgia Learning Lesson
And yet southwest Georgia, on the
whole, is gradually emerging from the
agricultural panic that the boil weevil
originally produced-and in the
process of evolution the farmers are
beginning to build more substantially
and on a firmer foundation than ever
before.
Where forty acres were in the old
days given to a cotton plow, last
year ten acres was the standard of
those farmers who actually succeeded
in beating the weevil. Those who
refuse to thus intensity their cotton
growing operations found their fields
swept by the pest and their pocket
books empty at the finish.
Those farmers who beat the weevil
in 1921 in this section-and a ma
iority of them did not-not only re-
duced their acreage around one
fourthof their prcweevil operations,
but instead of using 200 pounds of
fertilizer to the acre, as in the old
days, they used 500 pounds and $50
pounds, and applied it with intelli-
gence SO that every dollar of the in
vestment should pay a dividend.
scribe its meaning to intense plowing
1t means pushing the plan to early
fruitage by intense cultural methods.
beginning with the preparation of the
seed bed, the building up of the soil,
the supplying of the requisite chemi-
Gals to mature plant and fruit, and
to do it with the liberalty that pre-
cludes the possibility of plant starva-
tion, or the diseases resulting from
lack of balanced food that results
in destroying plant vitality.
In this section the lands are light.
Unless the cultivation is intense, the
maturing Of IT,. cotton plant it slow.
IN running race with the weevil it
must not be slow-hence the obvious
necessity not only for intense cultiva-
ton, 50 that intense cultivation may
at least have clear track and a
fair chance in its race with the wee
vii.
The farmers of this section who
are growing cotton successfully in
spite of the weevil are not only doing
so on radically reduced acreage and
by intense cultivation and liberal fer
tilization, but they are applying all
of the other essential rules that / have
emphasized from time to time in this
series. They rotate their crops, fol-
lowing cover crops with cotton, and
vice versa; they drain their cotton
lands; they keep the cotton fields seq
regated from natural alternating en-
vironments; they plant early as eli
matically safe, striving for good