2 
H. G. Hastings Co., Seedsmen, Atlanta, Georgia 
HOME GROWN FOOD 
PAYS NO OUTSIDER A PROFIT 
We are repeating here what has been said in a previous catalog. 
We consider that home production of food, grain and forage on 
every farm amply suilicient for the needs of the family and live 
stock is absolutely necessary to Southern farm prosperity and a 
style of living that we are all entitled to if we will each do our part. 
Let us be honest and quit trying to fool ourselves any longer. 
Can you, Mr. Cotton Grower, after dividing your crop with the boll 
weevil, which you will have to do every year, afford to pay any out- 
sider a profit on the food, grain and forage used by your family 
and work stock while making cotton? You couldn’t afford to do it 
with cotton at 50 cents. 
Can any of you out of present or prospective prices of cotton, 
tobacco, fruit or vegetables grown for shipment afford to pay an 
outsider a profit on what is consumed on your farm ? Certainly not 
when practically all of those things can be grown on your own 
acres at one-third to one-half the cost at merchant’s prices. 
We have all had some awful bumps since the summer of 1920, 
bigger, harder bumps than any of us could have anticipated. Some 
of these bumps could have been softened some had our government 
acted differently then, but that’s all water over the dam. It does 
no good to discuss that part of it now. 
The real-right-down-to-the-bottom-trouble is that we are paying 
unnecessarily too many profits and expenses to outsiders on the 
food and grain consumed on our Southern farms. We know that 
there are some exceptions to this, some good folks were far sighted 
enough to see the common sense necessity of home production but 
they are few in comparison with the many. 
We all go broke or near broke every time there is a slump in the 
price or yield of our so-called cash crops. It matters not whether 
the cash crop be cotton, tobacco, vegetables or berries for ship- 
ment, oranges, peaches or what not. The system of one crop growth 
and the buying of all or nearly all of the food and grain is a sys- 
tem deadly' to permanent farm prosperity. 
Our dream of easy money is over. We Avoke up to a reality of 
debt, disaster, thousands of farm bankruptcies, in many cases the 
savings of a life time, SAA’ept away. In greater or less degree this 
kind of a thing has happened three times in the last dozen years. 
We pay a fearful price every few years for the privilege of follow- 
ing this Avrong system. 
Do you knoAV any farmer in your community who has been for 
several years groAving his oaaui bread, meat, vegetables, grain and 
forage who Avas put out of business by the times Ave have passed 
through during the past tAA^elve or fifteen months? We don’t. 
It’s true that all of us are more or less hard up, money scarce 
and store or bank credit as scarce or scarcer than money. But, the 
man Avho has been making his bread and meat, who has enough on 
hand to do him until the next “bread and meat” comes in, has need 
for little credit and can get that credit if there is any credit around 
the neighborhood. 
We might just as AA^ell face facts. Most of us have bravely and 
courageously gone to Avork to repair the damage and losses of the 
past tAvo years. There was nothing else to do. We ought, however, 
neA’er let ourselA'es get caught in the same kind of a trap again. 
If we do we are not entitled to help or sympathy. 
We might just as well forget all about 35 or 40 cent cotton and 
like prices for the tobacco, the fruits, the market vegetables, etc. 
Those prices are probably gone, never to return within our life- 
time. We must face the necessity of making and selling cotton at 
less than 20 cents, probably around 15 cents Avith normal size crops. 
Other crops must be sold in proportion. 
Cost of production must be brought doAvn. The cost of making 
cotton or other cash crop is largely the cost of bread and meat for 
human labor, grain and forage for animal labor. You can not af- 
ford to pay an outsider a profit on the food and grain, the larger 
part of the cash crop money. Make food, make grain, make forage 
on your own acres and pay no unnecessary outside profits. 
HOGS KEEP SHERIFF AWAY 
Talking about live stock in a seed book may look out of place 
but it is not. Neither the South nor any farmer in the South is 
going to regularly prosper until a good measure of hogs, cattle and 
poultry is coupled up with general farm crops. 
Go anywhere in this broad country you will; go into any foreign 
country and you cannot find permanently prosperous farmers or 
permanently prosperous agricultural sections or districts except 
where cattle, hogs and poultry, fed on home grown crops are a part 
of regular farm practice. 
We might just as well get it through our heads right now that 
we cannot prosper without growing hogs, cattle and poultry on our 
farms, not only for eating on the farm ourselves but as a “cash 
crop”. No farmer ever AV'ent “broke” who had plenty of live stock 
and plenty of home grown feed for that live stock. 
Time and again within the last three months good farmers here in 
Georgia who grow a lot of hogs but have still been playing the 
cotton growing game considerably have told us that their hogs 
were the only thing that kept the sheriff aAA-ay this last fall. 
We especially stress hogs as the start in live stock on our farms 
because they are of quick growth, that is if pure bloods or good 
grades are used. Properly fed pure bred stock of breeds adapted to 
the South easily reach from 150 to 200 pounds in six or seA^en 
months and at the same time use up much for feed that would 
otherwise be wasted. 
There has been an outcry recently for- some cash crop to take the 
place of cotton. Hogs, cattle, both dairy and beef breeds, and poul- 
try are cash crops far better than cotton for the Southern farmer 
who will give them a square deal and feed them on home groAvn feed. 
There is an almost unlimited market in the South for meat, poul- 
try and dairy products and even Avere our Southern markets fully 
supplied we could with our faA’orable conditions of soil, climate and 
crops make meat, dairy products and poultry cheaper than any 
other section of the United States, 
Is there a market? First your home needs are to be fully sup- 
plied with meat, milk, chickens and eggs. Second, there are the 
city and town folks to feed. The manager of one of Georgia’s big 
meat packing plants said recently that a million pounds of fresh 
meat was coming into Georgia from outside every day. Yet most 
of our packing plants are shut down most of the year for lack of 
Southern grown hogs and cattle to slaughter. 
Despite the fact that cities such as Atlanta are buying all the but- 
ter they can get from southern creameries it is literally true that 
hundreds of carloads of Illinois and Wisconsin creamery butter 
comes into Atlanta every year and is paid for with cotton money. 
Yet Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi creamery butter is equal to 
if not superior to the Northern product. Our sister state of Ten- 
nessee rightfully boasts of the millions of dollars she draws from 
Georgia and other Southern States each year for chickens, eggs 
and turkeys. 
Friends, Ave have simply got to quit committing financial suicide 
every year by trading off our cotton or other cash crop for some- 
thing to eat and in most of the South for commercial fertilizer with 
which to grow the cotton. We have done this for sixty years and 
it gets us noAvhere except in the hole. You know this to be true. 
You suffer, your family suffers, your land suffers. 
The South is and always will be a farming country. It is your 
business and ours to make it a rich farming country instead of the 
relatiAmly poor one that it noAV is. If the Almighty eA'er made a 
natural live stock country it is the South. The only thing wrong 
is the lack of inclination of our people toAvards live stock. 
Most of our lands are “run doAvn” from continuous clean culture 
of cotton. We groan under fertilizer costs that can only be light- 
ened by plenty of manure produced on our farms by live stock 
feeding on home groAvn grain, forage and grazing crops. 
If you and your neighbors will grow hogs, cattle and poultry you 
need not be afraid of “no market”. If some merchant in your toAvn 
AAmn’t give you a square deal in marketing the hogs, cattle, etc., you 
can easily, Avith the aid of your county agent, organize a co-opera- 
tive selling organization and the marketing problem is settled. 
Live stock on every farm will prove the salvation of the South, 
make it rich and every grower of Ih’e stock in it rich. You will 
then get the profits that the outsider has been getting, the profits 
that have made the outsider rich and you comparatively poor. 
HoweAmr, don’t jump into live stock growing head over heels. If 
you have a start, increase your hogs, cows and poultry gradually 
but steadily. Your home needs of meat, milk, butter, chickens and 
eggs should be provided for first. After that comes sale of surplus 
for cash. 
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that hogs, cows and chickens 
can live on air, water, pine bark or scrub oaks. That kind of feed- 
ing will get you nowhere. Live stock means more corn, cowpeas 
and soy beans, mung beans, sorghum, chicken corn, velvet beans, 
Sudan grass, peanuts, chufas, oats, rye, barley and pastures. 
These are the crops that will walk to market on foot and make 
the boll weevil of no consequence. Get live stock and then plant 
feed crops for that live stock, This means success. 
