Farmers, Take Care of Your Woodlands, Says Editor, May 25, 1923

Have a Care to Your Trees

There is an interesting story on the front page of this newspaper this week about the timber resources and possibilities of North Carolina. While the country as a whole is using up and carelessly burning off its timber supply four times faster than it is reproducing new timber, there is still left on North Carolina farms alone something like 12 million acres of timber.

There are infinite possibilities in those 12 million acres of farm forests if properly conserved. We are told that they net the farmers of North Carolina an average of $2 an acre per annum as now carelessly handled. With a little intelligent care and shrewder methods of marketing, these lands would as readily net their owners as much as $5 per acre per annum. Visualize, if you can, a net revenue of $60 million a year from the timber on the farms of North Carolina! It beats tobacco, it beats cotton, it beats all the pigs and poultry.

Th extension Division of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture is going to help the farmer realize more from his neglected acres of woodland. One of the first steps will be to teach him the importance of cutting his big trees carefully, working up the small stuff and decayed trees intelligently and guarding his wooded acres against the ravages of fires.

A fact too little appreciated is that timber can be grown cheaper in Eastern North Carolina than anywhere else in the country because it has water transportation to the world’s largest markets right at its doors. They may grow timber a bit better in more Southern states, but freight rates eat up the profits. Have a care to the trees on your farm; a tree is worth as much as a cow or a pig, and while it take it longer to grow it doesn’t eat its head off to get its growth.

From page 4, the editorial page, of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., May 25, 1923, William Saunders editor