FARMING. 15 



than half the cost of the fertilizers while growing increased crops for 

 sale. 



INTENSIVE FARMING. 



Possessing wide areas of land, the Southern people have been ex- 

 tensive planters rather than intensive farmers. The effort of the 

 cotton planter was to see how many acres he could cultivate to the 

 mule, rather than how much labor he could profitably expend on an 

 acre. The growth of the market-gardening industry in the eastern 

 section of the State has shown the value of intensive culture, and the 

 market-gardeners are giving to the farmers lessons on the intensive 

 cultivation of the soil. With acres and acres of land covered over- 

 head high enough to work horses under, with iron pipes through 

 which a steam-pump forces the water for the irrigation of the fields, 

 and a cropping in winter and summer that keeps the land producing 

 income during the entire year, which our climate allows, the truck 

 farmers are second to none in the United States in the intensive use 

 of their land. And, as we have intimated, something of this inten- 

 siveness is practicable in the greater part of the State by reason of the 

 long season. The trucker of the east will plant cotton between the 

 rows of his early potatoes on which he has been lavish in the use of 

 fertilizers, and will get a crop of potatoes running up at times to 100 

 barrels per acre or more, and then a crop of more than a bale of 

 cotton per acre. The strawberry grower takes two crops of berries 

 from his land, and then he, too, plants cotton on the turned-under 

 strawberry sod and makes a fine crop. Or, he may plant a corn crop 

 after the strawberries are shipped and sow peas among it, and, after 

 the corn is off, have the finest of pasture for stock. The cotton and 

 grain farmer of the upper country sows peas after his small grain is 

 harvested, and cuts the heavy hay crop the same season, and can 

 leave the stubble sown with crimson clover for a hay crop the next 

 spring in time to plant corn or cotton. In fact, the long growing 

 season offers to the wise farmer opportunities for the intense cultiva- 

 tion of a few acres that cannot be had in a more northern climate. 

 In this work of diversifying and intensifying the agriculture of the 

 State, the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts at Raleigh, the 

 Agricultural Experiment Station, and the Department of Agriculture 

 with its test farms in various parts of the State, are all working with 

 zeal and energy, and the new-comer to the State can always depend 

 upon them for information and advice in the cultivation of the soil. 



