Nut Growing, a New American Industry 



By William C. Deming 



MOST people who live in cities come to think, if 

 they think about it at all, that the city is the 

 whole thing. The country is well enough for a 

 couple of weeks' vacation in the summer, or as a source 

 of milk and country sausage, but the city with its hurry 

 and bustle and vast business interests is the really im- 

 portant thing on which all else depends. Nothing of the 

 kind. If the cities were all destroyed and the inhabitants 

 distributed among the farms 

 everybody would get along 

 pretty comfortably. But if 

 the farms were destroyed the 

 great cities of the world would 

 perish in a few days. The 

 farms furnish the food for the 

 cities. 



The cities are growing faster 

 than the farms. How are we 

 going to feed the great city 

 populations of the future? Is 

 it to be on the present hand- 

 to-mouth system of agricul- 

 ture, with annual crops sown 

 in the spring and reaped in the 

 fall if the weather is good? 

 A bonanza king if it rains just 

 right, a near-bankrupt if the 

 weather and bugs are bad ? Or 

 are we going to develop a more 

 stable and permanent system 

 of agriculture in which tree 

 crops shall have a prominent 

 place ? 



. A tree is a permanent thing. 

 It lasts for years or hundreds 

 of years. It doesn't have to be 

 sown or planted every year, 

 and hoed and cared for like 



cause they are the richest natural food substance known. 

 A nut is a seed, the result of Nature's supreme effort to 

 pack as much nourishment as she can into the smallest 

 possible space for the nourishment of the future young 

 plant. Compared with the concentrated richness of the 

 nut the red-cheeked juicy pulp of the apple or peach is 

 but a sip of sweetened water, very pleasant to the taste 

 and important in the dietary but of little value as food. 



THE BEAUTIFUL SIGHT OF AN 



The almond industry is steadily growing in this country, and is a profitable one, 



are worth going miles to see. 



ALMOND ORCHARD IN BLOOM 



The blooming orchards 



grain 

 roots 



crop or pota- 

 go down into 



toes or beans. Once its great 



the earth it is pretty nearly independent of flood and 



drought. Pigs and sheep and cattle can graze under its 



hade and do it good rather than harm.' And if your 



ee is a '"great engine of production," an oak, chestnut, 

 walnut, hickory, fig, pawpaw, persimmon, mulberry, carob 

 01 honey locust, the dropping therefrom will fatten the 

 animals without labor by man. 



Nine-tenths of our crops go to nourish our domestic 

 animals and much of our work is waiting on them. If 

 we can manage so that the animals will wait on them- 

 selves, and there is nothing that agrees with them better, 

 we shall have more time to play with the children. 



Of all the tree crops nuts are the most important be- 



NUTS AS FOOD 



Many nuts, on the other hand, contain as much muscle- 

 building food as rich cheese, a third more than beefsteak, 

 twice as much fat as cheese, five times as much as beef- 

 steak and seven times as much as eggs. Chestnuts con- 

 tain 70 per cent of starch, nearly as much as the best 

 wheat flour and four times as much as potatoes. Peanuts 

 and hickory nuts are three times as nourishing as beef- 

 steak. When you think of it that way it hardly seems 

 to be the thing to munch casually triple extract of beef- 

 steak from a street nut stand or after a hearty dinner. 



The bad reputation for digestibility that nuts have is 

 due to such things. Eaten at the right time, in the right 

 amount and properly chewed they are as digestible as any 

 food of equal richness. 



A fifty-pound bushel of black walnuts costing one 



99 



