Newspapers in the western part of the state are telling about a car lot shipment of lettuce going out last week from Polk county. That will be news to a great many people in North Carolina, for it has been the general belief that the growth of lettuce for market is confined to the eastern section. The results obtained by the Polk famers teach two things, one being that anything that is grown on the farm for market in temperate zone can be successfully grown in any part of North Carolina. It shows that truck raising can be made as profitable in the west as in the east. The other point is that it shows what can be done by co-operative effort on the part of the farmers. the story of the result obtained by the Polk county farmers is told in the Charlotte Observer and Asheville Citizen. Referring to the efforts made a few years to encourage the production of lettuce in western North Carolina, the Observer says:
“As a direct result of that agitation, the cultivation of lettuce got a start at Linville. the prospects, with experimentation, became so promising that cultivation of lettuce was inaugurated as a commercial proposition by the farmers in Polk county—the county of the Thermal Belt and climatic conditions good for the catalogue of vegetable products. The Polk County Farmers Federation, Inc., was organized to grow and ship fruits and vegetables, and to deal in farming implements, feeds and fertilizers and general farm supplies. This organization has proved a promotive agency in Polk county agriculture. One of its ventures was in growing what is called the Iceberg lettuce for shipment to the markets.
“Yesterday this federation shipped the first refrigerator carload of lettuce ever grown in and sent out of western North Carolina. the developed result of this experiment in growing lettuce in the mountains is that the western section of the state can grow as fine an article of Iceberg lettuce as can be grown in California or Colorado, states made famous by its cultivation.
“The Polk County Farmers Federation building is located in Tryon, and great occasion was made of this first shipment of refrigerator car of lettuce. These Polk county farmers are bringing North Carolina fruit and vegetable possibilities to the front in a more practical way than has yet been done. They have not got a very big county, but they are enterprising fellows and know how to get the most out of what they have.”
Polk county is not nearly so well equipped by nature for truck farming as many other counties in the state, and if the farmers up there can make a success of it, there are counties in which the farmers should make a fortune at the trucking business.
We may be wrong, but we believe there are several big fortunes in trucking going waste right here in Durham county. If the same sort of attention and study were applied that is applied to other crops, and applied in trucking counties, there is every reason to believe that farmers in t5his community could make big money. It has been estimated by somebody that $6 million goes out of this county every year for foodstuffs that can be and should be raised right here at home. Of course there will never come the time when all of that money will be kept here, but at least half of it can very easily be retained. In other words, $3 million is being lost every year to some Durham county farmer or farmers. That money should be kept at home.
From page 4, the editorial page of the Durham Morning Herald, Sunday, June 1, 1924. E.T. Rollins, president and manager; W.N. Keener, editor.
A car lot means a railroad car, not a passenger car.
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