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Show MAKING ENDS MEET Regardless of whether our rural friends are raising sugar beets, wheat, corn, rye, fruit or what-not, we believe they will be interested in this letter which a southern man recently wrote to his home-town newspaper, for it may offer a valuable suggestion to someone in this locality. The southern man wrote: ' One of the most discouraging things that comes under my observation ob-servation is to see farmers buying meat, canned milk and potatoes. The average farmer cannot succeed unless he raises enough foodstuffs food-stuffs at home to feed himself and his family. 1 am just a common farmer, but I have raised plenty of corn, potatoes, meat and the like for my family and whill have a little to sell. I raised 200 bushels of sweet potatoes on one and one-tenth acre of land. I sold $50 worth of soy beans, and have plenty left for feed. I have other foodstuffs stored up, too, and even though my cotton crop wasn't very good I'm fixed all right to get through the winter." There is a great deal of common sense in that letter. When the farmer does not raise his winter foodstuff he loses most of the advantages of country life. His greatest economic assets are freedom free-dom from rent for a house and freedom from the grocery stores except for a few staples. When he buys things he could produce for h'mself on his own soil he is inviting a trade balance against himself from the very beginning. |