20 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETABLES 



DIVERSIFIED AGRICULTURE 



Entire plantings are frequently failures because growers rely 

 on single, or, at best, two or three crops for a livelihood. The 

 practice of growing large areas to cotton in' the South is an ex- 

 ample. Occasionally this is varied by corn or tobacco, and all 

 three crops are likely to be injured by the same insects, e. g., by 

 the bollworm, corn-ear worm or tobacco budworm, as this one 

 species is variously termed. In Texas there was at one time 

 the threatened danger of an abandonment of cotton culture 

 owing to the rapacity of the boll weevil. The large appropria- 

 tions that have been made available by Congress for the con- 

 trol of this pest should result in materially reducing the losses 

 occasioned by it, which now bids fair to seriously hamper the 

 production of this staple which nets our country $500,000,000 

 or more annually. The melon or cotton aphis has done great 

 damage in Texas since the beginning of the new century and 

 various crops in the South are threatened with new pests. It 

 is quite a problem, therefore, to decide what may be grown 

 most advantageously. 



Other striking illustrations of the danger of cultivating a 

 single crop can be pointed out. In some years in the past it was 

 simply impossible for truckers in parts of Maryland and Virginia 

 to make a living from cabbage, or other cruciferous crops or 

 from melons and other cucurbits, but by growing several crops 

 of widely different kinds they make a profit. 



In the Northeast the farmer does not have such problems with 

 which to contend and yet raises many crops, keeping his hands 

 busy nearly the year round, and there is no excuse for growers 

 in the South and elsewhere cultivating only a few crops when 

 by diversified or general farming losses from insects, from plant 

 diseases, and from adverse climatic conditions could be avoided. 



