SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE NEEDS FARM ANIMALS 49 



The forage which grows wild, in the old field and 

 waste lands of the South, and annually goes to 

 waste there, would protect the cattle of the entire 

 western ranges from winter starvation, which so 

 frequently faces them now. For concentrated 

 feeds and grain, the natural advantages of the South 

 excel those of the best feeding districts in the north- 

 ern Mississippi valley. The South, in spite of its 

 record of only 14 to 16 bushels of corn per acre as 

 an average, holds also the record for some of the 

 highest acre yields ever produced in the world. The 

 reason that the South buys corn from the North is 

 not because of the inability of the southern soil 

 and climate to produce this crop in tremendous 

 quantities, but because of the absolute indifference 

 and bad agricultural practice of the southern 

 farmers. 



SOUTHERN FEEDS AND FORAGES 



There are millions of tons of cottonseed an- 

 nually produced. Thirty years ago this by-product 

 of cotton raising was considered a nuisance, and 

 one of the problems of cotton gin owners was how 

 to dispose of it. It was customary at that time to 

 set fire to the large heaps which accumulated near 

 the cotton gin and get rid of it in this manner. 

 Finally someone began to use the half-decayed 

 material from these cottonseed heaps for fertilizer, 

 and found that it had considerable value for this 

 purpose. Later it was found that the oil which 

 could be extracted from cottonseed had many com- 

 mercial uses, while the material left after pressing 

 out the oil was eaten with great relish by live stock, 

 and thus instead of being a waste product, cotton- 

 seed had come to have a definite recognized value as 



