FARM MANAGEMENT IN SUMTER COUNTY, GA. 13 



Tenants stuck closer to cotton than owners. The tenants applied 

 their labor and capital to the production of that crop with which 

 they were most familiar and had had the most experience, naturally 

 feeling that they could ill afford to experiment with new systems 

 and practices. 



COKN. 



Corn was second only to cotton in acreage and was the principal 

 grain feed. It was also quite extensively used as a family food. 

 Comparing owner and tenant farms, the relation of the corn area 

 to the crop acreage, as a whole, did not vary materially in 1918 from 

 1913. The variation is shown in a comparison of years rather than 

 of tenures. In 1913 there was about one-half as much land in corn 

 as in cotton, while in 1918 there was practically as much land in 

 the one as in the other on the white-owner farms, and about three- 

 fourths as much on the farms of the other groups. 



SMALL-GKAIN CROPS. 



The small-grain crops (oats, wheat, and rye), taken together, were 

 next to corn in first-crop acreage. Of these oats occupied by far the 

 greatest acreage. The colored tenants devoted little attention to 

 the production of oats, many of them having but small patches. 

 The tendency in 1918 on both owner and tenant farms was toward 

 a reduction in the oat acreage. It is the general practice in this area 

 to harvest the oats and feed them in the sheaf, although some are 

 thrashed before being fed. Occasionally oats were harvested for 

 hay, but not over 10 per cent at most of the acreage was handled in 

 this way. 



Of the 534 farms studied in 1913 only 15 were producing wheat, 

 while in 1918 7 out of every 10 farms were producing wheat. Wheat 

 was grown more frequently by owners than by tenants. The acreage 

 devoted to wheat was usually small, the main object being to grow 

 the crop for flour. About 30 per cent of the farms growing wheat 

 in 1918 sold a share of the crops, but 68 per cent of the sales were 

 less than 50 bushels per farm. The farms growing wheat in 1913 had 

 from 1 to 5 acres, with an average of only 3 acres per farm. In 1918 

 the acreage per farm ranged from 1 to 80 acres, and averaged 6.25 

 acres. Only one-tenth of 1 per cent of the entire crop land on owner 

 or tenant farms was in wheat in 1913, and over 2 per cent in 1918. 

 Undoubtedly one of the outstanding reasons for the increased wheat 

 acreage was the difficulty of obtaining flour through the war period. 

 It would seem probable, however, that, in view of the change in 

 organization making more of the crop acreage available for grain 

 crops, wheat should continue to hold a more important place than in 

 the past. 



