4. ' ?:.* ": FARMING. 



are as well adapted to the grazing of cattle as any part of the coun- 

 try, while the abundant food crops of the piedmont section offer the 

 greatest opportunities for the winter feeding of these mountain- 

 raised cattle. Over a very large section of the piedmont and coast 

 regions the cotton crop has long been the chief interest of the farmers, 

 and when grown in good farming there is no money crop in the 

 United States that can equal it for average profit. True, it has 

 been allowed to too much absorb the attention of the farmers, and 

 has been grown almost as a sole crop on too many farms. But there 

 is a gradual awakening to the importance of good farming with cot- 

 ton, and good farmers who have realized the importance of a good 

 rotation of crops are finding out the value of such a rotation and are 

 understanding that there are other crops that can be grown with 

 profit as well as cotton, and that through the aid of these crops and 

 the great clover of the South, the cow-pea, they can grow cotton with 

 a greater yield per acre, and can get just as much cotton on a smaller 

 area as they could from the larger under the old system of merely 

 planting cotton. 



There is too much of a tendency among farmers coming here from 

 the North to ignore cotton and to go into other crops to the exclusion 

 of cotton. Northern men coming South are too apt to attribute the 

 worn and wasted condition of much of the upland soil to the cultiva- 

 tion of cotton, and they imagine that cotton is a very exhaustive 

 crop, while the very reverse is true, for, so far as the lint is concerned, 

 there is no crop grown that draws so lightly on the fertility of the 

 soil as cotton, and when the seed are properly applied to the rational 

 feeding of cattle and the return of the manure to the soil in a good 

 rotation of crops, there is no crop with which the land can be more 

 rapidly improved than in the cultivation of cotton. No good farmer, 

 coming to a new location, can afford to ignore what has been long 

 proved to be the best money crop of the section. 



The same remarks will apply to the northern counties east of the 

 Blue Ridge, where the tobacco crop has long taken the place of cotton. 

 Single cropping with tobacco is as bad as single cropping with cotton, 

 and rotative farming and the improvement of the land can be done 

 as well with tobacco as the money crop as with cotton. 



The greatest development in the cultivation of the soil has been 

 made in the coastal plain, .where immense areas are now devoted to 

 the production of early vegetable crops for the Northern market and 

 the growing of strawberries and other small fruits. The truckers of 

 the eastern part of the State are the most progressive cultivators we 

 have, and they are annually improving their production and adopting 

 intensive methods with protection and artificial heat during the win- 

 ter months for the production of crops ahead of the natural season. 

 With a soil unsurpassed for the purpose and a climate that makes it 

 easy to produce extra early crops, the business has prospered and is 

 increasing annually. But there is room in all parts of the State for 



