OILS WE EAT 



the "circus peanut" that butter makers prefer and the 

 cocktail and candy trades virtually demand, hold their 

 own in the Southeast. 



The peanut boom is war-born, due chiefly to the 

 about-face from Agricultural Adjustment Agency quo- 

 tas, strictly enforced, to official encouragement, flam- 

 boyantly publicized. While the peanut crop will be cut 

 back, nevertheless it may well persist in Georgia and 

 Alabama where diversification from cotton is no longer 

 a virtue but a necessity and where the hard-pressed 

 cottonseed crushers will encourage it. 



Since cottonseed is the tail of the cotton dog, it is 

 unlikely that its production will increase. By the same 

 token, however, it will not be cut any faster than the 

 reduction in cotton acreage. A by-product surplus is 

 always a nasty rival for any major product, and this 

 rigid, obligatory competition faces the soybean growers 

 unless agronomist Dave Killough comes through with 

 a perfected strain of his cottonless cotton plants. If 

 Texas starts deliberately growing cotton for seed, then 

 the South gets a new crop and the soybean farmer a 

 new kind of competition. 



One other quantity in the edible oils equation might 

 upset all calculations. If margarine is freed of its legal 

 shackles, we will face an oil shortage, not a surplus. 

 From the point of view of the South this is greatly to 

 be desired. It is greatly dreaded in the dairy sections. 

 Striking the balance of these hopes and fears over the 



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