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    1. Piano Lessons: 3 Sight Reading & Classical Pieces

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    1. The Sodfather: A Friend of Agriculture

      ... said I was going to “pray.” They bowed their heads in anticipation, and became very angry when they heard what I did. Later they came up to me and said that donkey bray was the worst thing they... Read more

      ... said I was going to “pray.” They bowed their heads in anticipation, and became very angry when they heard what I did. Later they came up to me and said that donkey bray was the worst thing they ever heard in their entire lives and swore they would never vote for me again. Times have changed since my first campaign. I doubt if anyone, certainly not in the near future, will serve three decades in this office. It is too big, too complex and too much change. When I first got i nto politics, the party organization was much stronger than it is today. Then, a newcomer had to pay his dues and work his or her way up the organization to get the blessings of party leaders for their approval and support in a statewide campaign. That process eliminated most weak characters and it tended to weed out candidates with problems, such as a lack of integrity or sincerity. Today, anybody with a lot of money or someone who can get other people to donate money can become a formidable candidate overnight. More often than not, the candidate who wins is the candidate with the most money to spend on television advertising, direct mail, consultants and opinion polls. I never took a poll in my early campaigns. Didn’t need to. I learned all I needed to know about politicking by talking to the farmer face-to-face and listening to his advice and working twelve to fourteen hours every day. Nowadays, the political process has become a brutal combat in which challengers seek to gain an advantage not by selling themselves or offering a better alternative to the incumbent. Rather, they seek to win by attacking the reputation of24the opponent. Campaigning now is dominated by negative advertisements carefully designed to destroy the character of good men and women. I am proud to say that I never did that. I was fortunate to be able to run my own campaign positively, talking about what I had done and what I intended to do if given an opportunity to serve another term. Sadly, money has become the most imp ortant factor in politics today. The politician with the most money and the meanest campaign usually wins. Money now decides the outcomes of most campaigns. The influence of money has reduced the esteem of politicians and office holders among voters. My political career has been an extremely pleasant and rewarding experience because it allowed me the opportunity to serve the people I love best, the farmers of North Carolina. The Future of Farming In North Carolina Despite the great challenges t hat now face our farmers the future of agriculture has never been brighter. We will solve the problems now confronting us and North Carolina farmers will continue to play an increasingly important role in the vital job of feeding America. The advance of technology and the application of this knowledge to agriculture has enabled the farmer to live longer, better and more enjoyable lives. Equally important, consumers benefit with good food and fiber, available in ample quantities at a reasonable price. Food accounts for just 10 percent of the family budget today, the lowest food cost in more than a century. Grocery store shelves are always stocked with a wide variety of healthy,25wholesome and delectable products. Nowhere has the advance of technology had a more significant impact than agriculture. We’ve witnessed greater agricultural progress in North Carolina, and throughout the nation, in the past three decades than occurred in the previous three centuries. I believe that progress will continue. To understand how the typical farmer might appear in the next generation, or perhaps this time in the next century, a mathematician might draw a line at the threshold of the previous two centuries and extend it forward for another one hundred years. The rami fications of such a projection are implausible. Will we be able to control the weather so that the frequency, timing and intensity of rainfall is dictated by crop needs? Will we be able to predict more accurately the demands and needs of consumers so that commodity production can be adjusted accordingly, avoiding the wide swings in supply and demand that have frustrated both farmers and consumers in the past with alternate cycles of feast- to-famine gyrations? And, will we achieve a balance between the rapid growth of certain commodities--such as hogs--and the increased stress they place upon the environment? I think the answer to all of these questions is an unqualified “yes.” And, I envy the young man and young woman today who commits his and her life to the wonderful calling of farming. In this century, we’ve progressed from where the typical farmer and his adolescent family toiled sunup to dark just to feed his family to today’s achievement where a mere two percent of the population feed the rest. In addition, there is an abundant surplus of farm exports that are responsible for our nation’s largest trade surplus. In North Carolina, total cash farm income has increased since 1900 from a few thousand dollars a year to nearly $8 billion a year. North Carolina farmers now enjoy the enviable distinction of earning the third highest net farm income in the nation. That achievement has brought an unprecedented era of prosperity to the farmer and his family. This progress also has benefited the consumer. If the grandsons of today’s farmers enjoy a proportionate leap forward in mechanized machinery, disease and pest control26and plant productivity gains as did their ancestors in the 20th century, the lifetime of the future farmer will be awesome. When I grew up, the son of a farmer on a Rowan County dairy farm, the mule and horse were our primary source of energy, outside the sweat and toil from my mother, father and siblings. Even at the time I became Commissioner of Agriculture in 1964, we looked at the new tractors, mere babes in the woods compared with today’s modern equipment, and marveled at the great progress of technology. In my time, farmers have progressed from the use of manpower, horsepower, steampower to the point now where most work, at least most of the hard manual labor, is done by machines. The science of farming will become even more advanced and more precise. Already, farmers are using computer and satellite technology to determine when to plant with great accuracy. North Carolina Cash Farm Income 1925-96 Table 1 Within the span of a single generation, we have advanced from the mule to satellite technology and we’ve only begun to tap the vast power of science applied to agriculture technology. Silicon chips, not human brains now27determine the right amount and the kind of nutrients. And they say progress will be even faster in the future. Predictions Here are some of my thoughts about the forces that will affect and shape the future farm. The averag e farm will get larger and there will be fewer farmers. While I have been a strong advocate of the small family farmer--and I hate to see this great icon of our country’s rich heritage fade into the twilight of a new century- -it is a sad fact that bigger farms are going to prevail. Between 1800 and 1900 the population of this country had increased from just over five million to 76 million. In 1900 the nation’s farm population totaled 29.4 million and the number of individual farms (5.7 million) exceeded the nation’s total population a century earlier. The average farm nationwide in 1900 was 143 acres. Today’s nationwide farm population is just 4.5 million and that number has shrunk 50 percent in the past 25 years. Meanwhile the average farm size has grown to 471 acres. In North Carolina, there are 58,000 farms today, one fifth as many as existed in 1900. However, the average North Carolina farm today is 160 acres, twice as large as in 1900. If we assume this trend will continue into the future, it is evident that more of our food and fiber will be produced on larger farms aided by the rapid advances of technology. This trend will benefit the farmer, particularly the big farmer, more than it helps the consumer. The concentration of agricultural production into the control of a half dozen or so giant conglomerates will inevitably result in higher prices at the grocery store. This will necessitate a continuing important role for government. At the turn of the century the lifespan of the average cit izen of this country, and this state, was about 45 years. Today, the average lifespan exceeds 75. Much of that increase is due to the abundance of wholesome and safe food. Consequently, much of the credit for our longer and better lives is due to the farmer. Technology Advances Technology will continue to revolutionize the way we farm. By improving the quality of seeds, plant nutrients and by exercising more control over the variables that have greatly influenced the practices of agriculture in the past, the future farmer will be able to exert far more control over his outcomes in the future. Modern equipment and computer technology already have reduced much hard work and uncertainty that once presented great challenges to the farmer.28Genetic enginee ring is in the midst of a great revolution to develop better seeds and livestock. Improved chemicals and organic products will continue to increase the farmer’s productivity and enhance his ability to control pests. North Carolina farmers are already ver y productive, as evidenced by the fact that the average net income per North Carolina farm averaged some $58,000 in 1996, more than twice the average net farm income ($25,299) nationwide. New marketing techniques, resulting from business alliances, vertic al integration, and more accurate economic forecasts, will take the guesswork out of the disposal of the farmer’s produce. We Will Feed the World As our farmers become more productive and develop modern and sophisticated management and marketing procedures, we will feed the world. Already, we are called upon to fill the void when Russia’s wheat crop fails or when China, the largest nation in the world, cannot feed its people. We have gone to the aid of hundreds of third world countries in times of crisis to relieve their starving masses from certain disaster. No one is more capable than the American farmer of producing surplus food and fiber to enable people of the world to enjoy a healthier and more wholesome diet. The Changing Role of Government To be sure, the role of government in American agriculture is changing. I am proud of the great and positive influence that government has had upon agriculture during my life. I can remember with vivid detail the despair on the face of my mother29and father in the depth of the Great Depression when our crops were virtually worthless because nobody had money to pay for food or anything else. It was a strong government policy that rescued the farmer and created the greatest farm economy in the history of mankind. I, for one, am not apologetic about what government has done for agriculture. Its impact has been vast. While the government may not play as direct a role in the future in planning, subsidizing and managing the supply of farm commodities as a means of guaranteeing the farmer a fair price for his labor in the future as in the past, a strong government influence will continue. As long as men and women farm, there will always be a need for government. While most farmers are honest, diligent and conscientious, a few will not abide by the rules. A few unscrupulous operators will behave as they did a century ago when it became necessary to create the North Carolina Department of Agriculture. As farms become bigger and as the productivity of our food and fiber is concentrated into fewer hands, the role of government in regulating, inspecting and protecting the interests of the consumer will become even more important. The threat of litigation is not enough to guarantee a safe and wholesome food supply. Only the intervention of government can inspire producers to achieve a high standard of ethical behavior. Government will continue to conceive and fund research in the quest for continued advances in agriculture. This is not something the private sector will choose to do with its profits. Government will continue its search for a disease- free environment for plants, healthy animals and clean rivers. Protecting the Environment Protecting the environment will become more important. As our cities and urban communities expand into the countryside, it will become more and more important for farmers and their neighbors to live in harmony. Farmers must do a better job managing their waste products, especially animal wastes, so that no adverse impact from agriculture operations spill into the rivers or evaporate into the air. I have said that for 25 years, as the record will show.30In North Carolina We have a bright agriculture future in North Carolina with cash farm income now totaling $7.8 billion and the total economic impact of farming and agribusiness exceeding $42 billion, the value of agriculture to the State of North Carolina and its people is significant. Our geographic location, convenient to the great east coast population centers and a mild climate are important advantages that will continue. Our universities, in conjunction with our own North Carolina Department of Agriculture scientists and other skilled personnel, will continue to develop new techniques and procedures to enable the farmer to increase productivity, cut costs and produce wholesome food and fiber at a reasonable expense. Our greatest resource is our people. It is to the diligence, the sweat and toil of the good men and women who cleared the land when it was a wilderness that we owe a great debt of appreciation. Generation after generation of farmers have tilled the soil and built the great civilization that we now enjoy. The first settlers were farmers and we owe them an enduring expression of our appreciation for their work and their sacrifice. The hardships they endured built a legacy that we enjoy today in the form of abundant food and fiber at a reasonable price. We have made great strides in the past half century, especially in the last three decades, in improving the life of the farmer. I am deeply convinced that for the North Carolina farmer, the best times are yet to come.3132North Carolina Agriculture in 1964 Total Cash Receipts $1.2 Billion Table 2 North Carolina Agriculture in 1996 Total Cash Receipts $7.8 Billion Table 333Chapter 2 The North Carolina Farmer: A Profile Pioneer, Settler, Builder, Planter, Yeoman, Tenant, Conservationist, Scientist, Teacher "The farmers are the foundation of civilization and prosper ity.” Daniel Webster If you ask me who is the North Carolina farmer and what has he done for our great state, I will tell you this. The farmer built North Carolina. He deserves much of the credit for the necessities, comforts and conveniences we know today. In just this century, our lifespan has increased fifty percent and the quality of our lives has improved immeasurably, largely as the result of agricultural progress. The farmer in North Carolina generates nearly $8 billion worth of cash income annually from his labor. Related commerce and agriculture-dependent industry, such as timber, paper and tobacco manufacturing create agribusiness ventures exceeding $42 billion each year. A preponderance of North Carolina's agricultural growth has taken place in the past three decades and it can be attributed to three things: 1. The advance of technology and its farm applications. 2. Crop diversification. 3. Aggressive marketing. I am proud to say some of the credit for these accomplis hments belongs to the prudent leadership and loyal34stewardship of North Carolina Department of Agriculture employees. Many distinguished citizens have made significant, lifelong contributions to the cause of agricultural progress in North Carolina. Their story deserves to be told. Technology There are two components in the advance of technology and its applications to agriculture. First, technological achievements in mechanization vastly increased productivity on the modern farm. When the tractor replaced the farm mule, one man suddenly could do the work of twenty, then forty and now a hundred. Second, scientific advances have given the farmer superior, prolific seed and powerful chemicals to destroy crop pests and eradicate animal disease. The consumer is the principal beneficiary of this leap in technology as evidenced by the fact that food costs the average family only 10 percent of its budget today. Just a century ago, the typical farmer and his large, extended family worked sun-up to sun-down just to feed his family. Diversification The result of crop diversification can be seen from the comparison of statistics between 1960 and 1994 (see Table 2). The story is quite simple. As recently as 1960 tobacco accounted for almost one out of every two dollars of cash farm income. Three decades later tobacco accounts for more than a billion dollars in North Carolina farm sales but today it represents just one out of every seven dollars of farm income. Already, sales from hogs and poultry each exceeds tobacco income. We have made great strides in diversifying our cash crops and that is the solid foundation upon which the future of farming in North Carolina depends. Marketing None of these achievements would have been meaningful without an aggressive marketing initiative, largely by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, which sought to create demand for existing and potential North Carolina products. Much progress has been made in marketing strawberries, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, poultry and pork products.35In 1995, some 80 loads of Irish potatoes grown in eastern North Carolina were shipped to Canada under a special agreement negotiated by our Department and Canadian customs officials. Without that agreement and the advance sales, those potatoes would never have been planted. The Typical Farmer The North Carolina farmer today is light years ahead of his colonial contemporary in the way he works. Equipped with an array of modern technology and an advanced body of knowledge, today's farmer produces a sufficient quantity of food for himself and 130 other people. He still works daylight to dark at certain peak times; however, mechanization has brought him the tools which allow planting, cultivation and harvesting to be done with only a fraction of the manual labor required just a generation ago. With this advanced know-how, our farmer stands out, a giant among his peers across the nation. There are 58,000 farms in North Carolina today. The typical farmer is 55 years old, or to be precise, 54.7 years as the U.S. Census Bureau found in 1992. There are only one fifth as many farms in North Carolina today as there were at the beginning of this century; however, today's Tar Heel farm averages 160 acres each and are twice as large as the typical farm in 1900. North Carolina leads the nation in the production of tobacco, sweet potatoes and turkeys. We are number two in pickled cucumbers, trout and cash receipts from poultry and egg products. North Carolina pork producers rank thir d in the nation and have written a new significance to the old adage "bring home the bacon" as the rapidly growing swine industry promises to become even more important in our state's farming future. We rank fourth in the production of commercial broiler s, peanuts, blueberries and rye; seventh in apples; eighth in chickens (not counting broilers), strawberries, peaches and watermelons; ninth in eggs and tenth in cotton. In view of the fact that North Carolina ranks 10th in population among all the states, those measures of achievement in which our farmer out performs his peers nationwide is an amazing story of both perspiration and inspiration. In 1790, some 93 percent of all people in the young nation were farmers and most of their life-long labor, from daylight to dark, was spent providing food and shelter for themselves and their families. Major NC Farm Commodities Rank Item 1996 Cash Receipts (Millions)36 1Hogs $1,749 2Broilers 1,310 3Tobacco 1,021 4Greenhouse/Nurs ery 889 5Turkeys 612 6Cotton 343 7Corn 242 8Chicken Eggs 218 9Soybeans 217 10Dairy Products 212 11Cattle & Calves 154 12Wheat 123 13Peanuts 96 14Sweet potatoes 53 15Apples 24 North Carolina’s Rank in U. S. Agriculture, 1996 Table 4 Today, barely two percent of our population are farmers but they feed the other 98 percent with abundance, quality and dependability. The shelves of America's grocery stores are always stocked with an abundance and great variety of reasonably priced and attractively packaged foodstuffs. Today the typical family spends only 10 percent of its annual budget on food. Sixty years ago food took nearly half the family budget. One hundred years ago almost all of the family productivity, including the labor of several adults, was spent during the growing season sowing, cultivating, harvesting and storing food. That kind of life came to37be called "subsistence" farming and it was the only kind of life most of our citizens knew for more than half our country's history. The First Settlers Were Farmers With his own hands the farmer cleared the virgin forests and planted a crop to feed his family and livestock. Possessing little more than the clothes on his back, the farmer and his strong-hearted wife overcame immense hardships as they migrated first through rich Coastal Plains, then across the red clay hills of the Piedmont and finally up into the Highlands. The early Tar Heel f armer lived off the land, supplementing the food he did not grow by picking wild berries, fishing and hunting wild game and fowl. He saw little cash and if he had any money there was not much to buy with it, except more land to till. Tobacco, because o f its demand and because it could be preserved and stored easily, became an early form of exchange. In 1760 a pound of tobacco sold for as much as a bushel of wheat in England, yet cost only a fraction as much to raise and ship.1 The farmer grew corn , potatoes and beans for his own table. Cotton and sheep, and the skins of wild game, provided raw materials for his clothing. He read the Bible for his enlightenment and spiritual guidance. His simple log home of hand hewn logs was usually built near a creek or a fresh spring that provided water for drinking, cooking and rare baths. His simple way of life may sound romantic and nostalgic today but it was a brutal existence as reflected by the high rate of infant mortality and a relatively short life-span for those who survived into adulthood. As the farmer moved westward, he formed towns and communities. Horse paths were widened to accommodate wagons and became roads, linking community and town and county to county. In this manner, the farmer created the building blocks upon which the societal foundation of North Carolina rests today. 1 Edward J. Dies, Titans of the Soil (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Press, 1949), p. 14 .38The farmer was America's original entrepreneur. He took great risks that placed his own survival in jeopardy. More than any other group, farmers developed and nurtured a set of values that have constituted the norm in public thought and behavior in North Carolina and much of the nation. These values, distilled over the white hot flame of a southern mystique, tempered by a brutal Civil War and flavored with periodic episodes of hard times, came to be known as the "North Carolina Way." They produced a self-sufficient farmer strengthened by adversity and hardened by the reality that he must survive by his own efforts. Although this good way of life, characterized best for its strong work ethic, honesty, integrity and candor mixed with a wry sense of humor, came under siege in the 1960s, our core values established by the early farmer form the preferred lifestyle today for an overwhelming majority of our good rural and urban citizens. The First Farmer Our first farmer of note was George Washington, the first President, first commander-in-chief, and, first in the hearts of his countrymen. A decade before the American Revolution, George Washington was part of an unsuccessful effort to drain North Carolina's Great Dismal Swamp and use the rich basin for farming. Washington was an early scientific farmer, carefully rotating his crops and experimenting with primitive ways to prevent soil erosion and to enrich the soil, long before the discovery of chemical fertilizers. At the height of his farming success, Washington's plantation produced 89,000 pounds of tobacco in 1763.2 Though he died the wealthiest man in America, Washington experienced the cash-starved plight of many farmers as evidenced by the fact he had to borrow money to attend his first inauguration as President. In his heart, George Washington was a farmer before he was either a soldier or statesman, as he wrote in 1788, the year before he became President: "I am led to reflect how much more delightful to an undebauched mind is the task of making 2 Ibid.39improvements to the earth, than all the vainglory which can be acquired from ravaging it by the most uninterrupted career of conquests." 3 Blessed by Abundance When the first English explorers walked ashore on Carolina soil at Roanoke Island, July 26, 1584, the poet among them, Philip Amadas, described what he saw and it was sweet music to the ears of those pioneers who knew they would have to live off the land. The new land, Amadas wrote, "was clad with vines which reeled so full of grapes as that the very beating and surge of the sea had overflowed them of which we found such plentie as well there as in all places else, both on the sand and on the green soil, on the hills as in the plains, as well as on every little shrub as also climbing towards the tops of the cedars, that I thinke in all the world the like abundance is not to be found."4 The Unfriendly Land North Carolina has become a great farming state in spite of the fact that conditions here were never completely ideal for agriculture. To be sure, our year-round, mild climate with its four distinct seasons is a major advantage and that comes from our location in the temperate zone, lying between 34 degrees and 36.30 degrees north latitude. Most of the great civilizations of the world - the Romans, Greeks, the Egyptians, the Syrians -- have risen around the earth from this same geographic band which features ample rainfall, bright sunshine and a long growing season. The soil has presented the North Carolina farmer some of his greatest challenges. Except for parts of the lower coastal plain, North Carolina was not blessed with an endless supply of rich, verdant soil. Farmers quickly exhausted the nutrients from their good earth. Not knowing a better way, they abandoned these spent fields and cleared more land to till until those fields, too, were exhausted. The early farmer toiled under the frequently repeated and mistaken notion that it was cheaper to buy a new acre than fertilize an old one. In the mid-1930s, not long after commercial fertilizer became available, the western coastal plain region of North Carolina held the dubious honor of using more fertilizer than any other region in the entire country. 3 Ibid, p. 13 . 4James M. Robinson, A History of Agriculture in North Carolina (Unpublished manuscript) State Library, Raleigh, NC, p. 2.40The Farmer Fights To Be Free Rice and tobacco were important cash crops during the early days of the Carolina Colony with northern farmers favoring large tobacco fields and the southern planters growing rice in the low wetlands. Both crops became valuable trade commodities and sources of contention with merchants in the Mother country who manipulated the trade laws to their advantage. On April 12, 1776, North Carolina farmers became fed up with unfair trade policies, high taxes, cumbersome regulations and the arrogance of the British monarchy. Assembled in the town of Halifax, then a prosperous farming and trading center on the banks of the Roanoke River, they voted to authorize the North Carolina delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence. This was the first declaration of independence by any of the colonies and became a source of inspiration for other oppressed farm leaders. Such is the history of the North Carolina farmer. His past is inexorably linked to the step-by-step development and progress of the state. Visitors to the historic town of Halifax today marvel at the knotted and gnarled 200-year old mulberry tree which stands near the site where the Halifax Resolves were enacted by North Carolina's legislative leaders as they embarked upon the first declaration of independence of any of the colonies. The mulberry tree is the sole survivor of an orchard of its kind that had been planted by prosperous Halifax merchants, hoping to induce the silk worm to propagate and do its work. Unfortunately, this was not the species of mulberry favored by the silk worm and the effort to produce silk in copious quantities failed.41Early colonial records indicate that locally produced silk sold for as much as 25 English pounds per pound. Silk was so significant among the property of Royal Governor Gabriel Johnston that he mentioned it in his will. However, in their dream to create in the new world a source of silk rivaling the fine quality of silk in the Orient, the North Carolina farmers demonstrated a spirit of energy, imagination and scientific curiosity that continues today as a major strength of the Tar Heel character. In the early 1700's tobacco brought 10 shillings per hundred weight. Indian corn sold for one shilling eight pence per bushel. Wheat was three shillings, eight pence a bushel; butter, six pence a pound; cheese four pence a pound.5 Pitch, the raw product from which turpentine was made, brought a pound a barrel and became a very important trade commodity. But the real money to be made was in livestock. A barrel of pork sold for two pounds five pence and a barrel of beef brought one pound and 10 pence. Hemp was raised in prodigious quantities and sold for six pounds a ton and that was before the young generation began smoking its leaves. Diversification Comes Slowly For much of its first two hundred years, North Carolina was a one-crop state, depending largely upon the fortunes of first cotton and then tobacco to provide the cash income that could be harvested from the good earth. There was good news and bad news in this strategy. Good times were very good but the bad times were very bad and the bad times, for most hard working people, seemed to outnumber the good times. In good times, the farmer di d the work and shared the income from his crop with the banker and the merchant. In bad times, the farmer quite often lost his farm and his home to his creditors though the cause of his bad fortune may have been entirely beyond his control, coming from either too much rain, or 5 Ibid, p. 23.42too little, the boll weevil or a hundred other pests that lay in wait for the right moment to attack. As recently as 1960, tobacco accounted for 49.1 percent of total cash farm income in North Carolina. In 1996, tobacco cash receipts totaled $1 billion and accounted for 13 percent of the state's total farm income. Cash income from the sale of livestock, dairy and poultry products totaled $4.4 billion in 1996 and exceeded the value of cash receipts from all crops by $1 billion. Cash income from both hogs and poultry each now exceed tobacco in cash receipts. Hogs are now the number one source of cash farm income in North Carolina. This achievement was possible because of the eradication of hog cholera and brucellosis; more will be said about these two important achievements later. The comeback of cotton is a remarkable story that has been untold. In 1996, North Carolina farmers planted 721,000 acres of cotton and by the year 2000, I believe, and am hopeful, we will see more than a million acres planted in this crop that once was king of the North Carolina farm. The 1994 cotton crop sold for nearly one dollar a pound, a far sight better than the nickel a pound my father got for his cotton in 1933. Until 1994, cotton had not brought a dollar a pound since the Civil War. The success of cotton is attributable in large part to the eradication of the boll weevil, a battle in which the North Carolina Department of Agriculture played a major role. It has been my lifelong ambition to eradicate the boll weevil, which we have done in North Carolina. Technology and marketing have played a major role in cotton's success. More about that story later. A number of other crops have important stories to tell and hold great potential as significant sources of greater farm income in the future. Marketing See Chapter 5 for a detailed discussion of the Department's marketing program.43Good Leadership Much of North Carolina's success in developing its farm economy is due to good leadership by many people in both the public and private sectors. Two of Nor... Read less

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