15
They developed the Dixie-18 and I'd have to look back now, but anyway the
hybrid corn, they helped out there. They said the yields of corn, a man
was tops at ten bushels, some of them made more than that. Well, it's the
yields of all crops, take the varieties, they change varieties, get the
most adaptive varieties, and then the thing about the cultural prices, and
the proper fertilization and the insect control. You could say that about
all crops. In other words, when I was in Holmes County I remember the
peanut. I've seen some yields as low as two, three and four hundred pounds.
Of course, the fella sold a little, but he wanted to get his seed. A man
made an eight hundred pounder, I think our average for the county was about
eight-hundred-twenty-five pounds per acre. Well, a man that made a thousand
pounds per acre was a good farmer. When I quit inspecting for the
department of agriculture, Mr. Fugit down here, he said he was making two-
and-a-half tons.
K: That's pretty impressive.
M: In Levy County, their average, I just cut the thing out and told my wife
to put it in her purse, because I'm going to Franklin, Virginia, that's a
big peanut area. My son's father-in-law was a peanut grower, and I was
telling him about the yields. It was hard to believe when you're having
better than two tons an acre. Now,you can just check the county agent of
Levy County if you want to say that's the highest yield. Mr. Farb was the
county agent, they got a new one down there and they sent him to Jackson
County. He's been developing this yield business down here, Jackson County
was the biggest peanut county in Florida, and so they hired him, and they
were going to try to increase the yields over there--and he will do that.
It's just hard to believe.
Now when I was a child, before I left, and got to Georgia and came down here
in 1921, Jack (Penzie) of the bank, I never will forget it, offered a thousand
dollars to any man who made a hundred bushels of corn to the acre. He had the
extension service, county agent and all of us checking for it.
Now that's for, I don't know when it was ever. Gus (Yalk) was the county
agent, and Gus was thirty-eight or thirty-nine. He was the county agent
over in Jackson County, and we were talking about it. Gus is probably dead
now. It's just hard to believe how it increased the yields. There's few
people on the farm, and they ain't farming the acreage like they used to.
And you take vegetables, the new varieties, and then they experiment with
the new insecticides and things. It's all kinds of things.
K: Do you think most farmers were willing to adopt these techniques?
M: Well, they were shy at first, and that's the reason why. You get to know
people, and you start working with the farmers. One of them had a little
prestige, they looked up to him, because he was above average. You get him
started and they see he's doing something, and they would follow suit. If
you hold these experiments out there on his farm, let him just plant a
little like you want him to plant, and then measure the yield.
K: Yes.