LEARN NC

Agriculture

About nine-tenths of the population are engaged in agricultural pursuits. The whole system of agriculture in this State is very inferior to that of most European countries or even to that of the Northern States. The abundance and cheapness of land tempts many of the farmers to cultivate their fields for a number of successive years without fertilizing them to any extent, and when the strength has become exhausted the field is abandoned and a new piece of virgin land is cleared and put through the same process.

Since the abolition of slavery, however, this bad practice has not been so common, the tendency now being to reduce the acreage and raise the standard of cultivation. By these means as large a yield is now often obtained from one acre as was formerly had from two. About half the area of the State is suitable to the growth of cotton and of late years the production of this great staple has been very largely increased. The soil of some or the southern counties is especially adapted to cotton culture, the yield being quite large and the quality equal to that of the New Orleans cotton. The cotton crop of the United States for 1874 is estimated at 3,500,000 bales, of which about 200,000 bales were produced in North Carolina. The Tobacco plant thrives in about one-third of the State. It is most profitably cultivated in the northern and western counties where a very fine quality is produced. Very little of the tobacco crop is shipped at the ports of the State. The most of it is sent to Danville, Petersburg and Richmond, in Virginia, where large quantities of North Carolina tobacco are manufactured and sold as Virginian. Before the emancipation of the slaves, rice was extensively cultivated in the south-eastern counties, especially along the Cape Fear River, but since then rice culture in this State has been almost abandoned owing principally to the difficulty and expense of obtaining suitable labor and also to the low prices that have prevailed.

Wheat, Rye and Oats grow in all parts of the State, but thrive best in the western and northern counties.

Indian corn or maze is the principal bread crop of the southern and eastern counties. Large quantities of this grain are raised on the rich alluvial lands or the eastern and north-eastern counties and shipped to the pitch pine region of the State and also to Norfolk and Baltimore.

The light, sandy Soil of the piney-woods section is well adapted to the growth of the Sweet Potato—one acre of moderately fertile land often yielding three hundred bushels of potatoes.

North Carolina is well adapted to the production of grapes and fruit — dried fruit especially being quite an important item among the exports of the State. It is mostly shipped by railway to New York and other northern markets.

Several of the most valuable varieties of grapes grown in America, such as the Catawba, Isabella, Lincoln and Scuppernong are natives of North Carolina. It is thought that in the course of a few years this will be one of the principal wine producing States in America.