SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE NEEDS FARM ANIMALS 55 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES 



Certain districts in the South within the past 

 five years have made enormous strides in ridding 

 themselves of the one-crop idea. They no longer 

 carry all their eggs in one basket. In some of the 

 districts in Texas, which the boll-weevil devastated 

 in 1903-4, they are now shipping carloads of cattle 

 and hogs — this from a district where five years ago 

 every pound of meat consumed locally was shipped 

 in from northern packing centers. This same 

 progress is true with regard to the raising of po- 

 tatoes, onions and other food crops upon land 

 formerly devoted exclusively to cotton growing. 

 In one district the production of cotton dropped 

 from 16,000 bales to 9,000. The farmers were 

 driven to raising food crops and live stock, and 

 within five years their output of these products had 

 increased 500 per cent. At the same time they have 

 been able to gradually increase their output of 

 cotton, although farming a smaller area in cotton, 

 so that by the time this tremendous output in food- 

 stuffs was reached they were again producing from 

 15,000 to 18,000 bales of cotton. 



These examples of a readjusted southern agricul- 

 ture and the best teachings of the southern agricul- 

 tural colleges, point out definitely and clearly the 

 route for placing southern farming upon a perma- 

 nent and suitable basis. Give the southern soil a 

 chance to show what it can do in the way of grow- 

 ing heavy forage crops of legumes and what it can 

 do in the way of producing more and better live 

 stock. Give it a rest from its years of tobacco and 

 cotton growing, and establish a definite rotation 

 which will call for the growing of clovers, and for 

 the addition of the fertility produced by the 



