180 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



improvers and nitrogen collectors. We were shown, but a few days since, a 

 plant of the common Virginia peanut, which had more nitrogen nodules on 

 its roots than any we have ever seen. The whole of the roots of the plant 

 were completely covered with these nodules. As commonly used the soil gets 

 little of the benefit of this nitrogen collecting in the peanut crop, since the 

 whole plant, roots and all, is removed from the soil. By a rational system 

 of stock feeding on the peanut farms, and a good rotaion of crops, there is 

 no doubt that the crop could be made to aid the farmer in the building up 

 of his soil, instead of its depreciation. At any rate, it is evident that the 

 peanut, like all other legumes, is able to get its own supply of nitrogen from 

 the air. Nitrogen, as is well known, is the most expensive element when 

 purchased in a commercial fertilizer, and the farmer whose money crop is one 

 of the nitrogen collectors has a great advantage over those who have to get 

 their nitrogen from plants that give a smaller cash return at the time being. 

 If the peanut was grown as we grow cow peas and clover, and returned to the 

 soil through feeding to animals, or by plowing the growth into the soil, it 

 would be one of the best soil improvers ; while, as it used, it is the means for 

 reducing the fertility of the land on which it is grown. The chief source 

 of the peanut crop of the United States is the crop grown in Virginia, 

 North Carolina and Tennessee. Much of the soil in these States is admirably 

 adapted to the successful growth of the crop, and for many years the crop 

 was a very profitable one, but of late years there has been a combination of 

 conditions which have made it far less profitable than formerly. The same 

 causes which have brought unproductiveness to other crops of the South, the 

 constant cultivation of the crop on the same land, the utter absence of a 

 rational rotation of crops, and the complete removal of the plant, roots and 

 top, from the soil, with a lack of attention of the proper fertilization, together 

 with the commercial conditions which have placed the growers at the mercy 

 of a combination, or trust, have all combined to make the crop unprofitable 

 to the average farmer. Where crops of even 100 bushels per acre were 

 formerly made the present average is put by competent authority, at 20 

 bushels per acre. The same causes which have made the average cotton crop 

 in the older cotton States less than one-half what it would be with good 

 farming, have reduced the average of the peanut growers. The tables of 

 analyses of the peanut products, which we give in the Appendix to this 

 volume, will show the great value of the crop, and the great drain it makes 

 on the soil, by the present system, or rather lack of system, in its culture. 

 The food value of the peanut is shown to be high, since the kernels have an 

 average of 29 per cent, of protein, 49 per cent, of fat, and 14 per cent, of 

 carbohydrates, which shows that they rank higher than most other concen- 



