By F.H. Jeter, Extension Editor, N.C. State College, as published in the Wilmington Star, April 16, 1945
Few people realize the importance of the Negro in North Carolina farming. About one-half of all Negroes in the state are in rural sections where they operate 57,428 farms. These farms contain 2,728,997 acres of cultivated land with a property valuation of $106,392 and having nearly four million dollars worth of machinery and farm implements on them.
Negroes also won outright 13,93? [number cut off] farms and are part owners of 4,337 others. These farms contain 882,274 acres with a valuation of nearly $31 million. The 39,134 Negro tenants in North Carolina operate 1,963,870 acres with a property valuation of nearly $82 million. Finally, out of all the 57,428 Negro farm operators in the state, 44,909 of them live and work in the 43 counties now served with Negro farm and home agents employed by the Agricultural Extension Service.
The first and main job of these Negro Extension agents is to teach their people how to live. This has always been the fundamental idea back of this service since it was started in 1912. The white county agents, of course, work with Negro farmers as they do with all rural dwellers and they try to bring to them the latest facts about agriculture and home life, as well as the latest in governmental rulings and regulations. However, the Negro agent concerns himself primarily with making the people of his race as independent of time prices and of “furnishing” as he possibly can.
It is a fact also that most of the food crops produced by North Carolina Negro farmers are consumed on the farms where raised. Last year, 1944, the agents assisted 27,464 different families in improving the food supply on their farms by the simple expedient of suggesting desirable changes in production methods. The Negro agents have been giving special attention to the production of gardens, fruits, meats, milk, poultry and eggs. Because of the new emphasis on livestock growing in the state, considerable time has, of necessity, been given to the growing of feed crops, including corn, wheat, legumes and pastures.
R.E. Jones, with headquarters at the A&T College at Greensboro, heads up this Extension work with Negroes and is a progressive and far-seeing young leader. He knows that the Negro farm family must be brought along slowly and carefully with great emphasis on the first fundamentals of good farming and rural home life. That is why he and his agents are spending so much of their time on food production. Two-thirds of the 43 Negro agents are located in the old cotton-growing counties and it has been doubly hard to make the farmers in these counties see the importance of growing cash crops as a surplus above the needs of food and feed on the home farm.
Last year, a great effort was made to get more milk in the diet. Many of these rejections by the Army on account of physical handicaps was among the young men of his race. He wants them to have a better diet, especially more milk and other such protective foods. For that reason, he began a campaign to place more milk cows among the Negro families of eastern Carolina last year. As a result, he and his associates placed 2,176 heifers and cows. He also had placed 164 purebred breeding sires. He found that 873 of the cows and heifers went to the farms of Negro tenants and 43 per cent of the total when on farms where there had never been a milk cow before. During the last two years, the Negro Extension workers have placed 31 carloads of dairy cows with Negro farmers and no one values these animals any higher than do the new owners.
While Negro farmers, in the main, are learning the fundamentals of better farming, they are not forgetting that land must be kept at a high state of fertility to make farms profitable. Jones had records to show that 11,281 of his cooperating farmers carried on commendable efforts in trying to build up land and keep it from washing away. His agents taught them about terraces, crop rotations, the use of sod crops and other sound conservation practices.
The home agents, under the direction of Mrs. Dazelle Foster Lowe, state leader charge of home demonstration work with Negro women, report that these women canned 4,377,053 quarts of fruits and vegetables; they dried 214,062 pounds of these; and stored meats, potatoes, and other fruits and vegetables to the amount of nearly 3 million pounds. They also did excellent work with clothing and improved housekeeping methods as taught by the home agents.
Negroes also have their 4-H clubs and they are all doing good. As a matter of fact, there are 28,861 young Negro boys and girls now enrolled in 536 organized clubs.
More than 7,000 voluntary community or neighborhood leaders are helping the home and farm agents in their work with the rural people and the whole effort is resulting in better farming.
When it is realized that the first Negro county agent was appointed in 1912 somewhat as an experiment with only 24 being appointed up until 1924, it can be seen how quickly and effectively the Negro farmers have come to use the services of these workers. The first Negro home agent was appointed in 1922. Now there are 82 farm and home agents at work. They are a part of the Agricultural Extension Service at State College with their headquarters unit at the A&T College at Greensboro. The white agents also work with the Negro farmers as needed and, on the whole, this entire demonstration effort, as is the case of other relations between the two races, is progressing in a satisfactory and efficient way for the good of the state.
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