Here©s Georgia! LIBRARIES - the Digital Library of Georgia

In recent years the
average yield of corn
in Georgia has in
creased approximately
five bushels to the acre,
and the output of grain
and food stuffs gener
ally has grown millions
of dollars in value. Our
harvests are not only
more bountiful than be
fore, but also more va
ried, each season hav
ing its own peculiar
crops, and its assured
sources of income. The
State still lacks much
of being self-sustaining
in food supplies, but it
is a great deal more so
thqn it was a few years
ago, and it is moving
steadily towards com
plete independence.
Everywhere there is
room for more doers of
things worth while.
130 FACTS ABOUT GEORGIA
county farmers went into the hog business in a definite way from
twenty-five to forty years ago, and after years of experience have
reduced hog raising to a scientific proposition. In the year 1915
the farmers of the county marketed 2,186,750 pounds of cured
ham and bacon and sold on the feet about 75 carloads of live hogs
to the agents of packing houses.
The farmers of Brooks county have for twenty-five years had
their own cold storage plants on each farm, and twenty years
ago were having ice shipped from Savannah, a distance of over
100 miles, for use in their cold storage plants. These plants
were the first individual farm cold storage plants in America,
and in the summer of 1915 the United States Government sent
experts to Brooks county to investigate the cold storage plants
of farmers in Brooks county and made drawings of same to be
used in a bulletin of the government to be issued some time during
1916. The individual cold storage plants of farmers of Brooks
county accommodate from 50,000 to 100,000 pounds of meat
at one time, and regardless of weather conditions they never lose
any of their meat.
The Brooks county ham has become famous, and is used by
hotels and restaurants from Virginia to Texas. In 1916 the
demand for these hams more than doubled the supply. The hogs
are run on peanut fields up to about one month of killing time,
when they are put on a strictly corn diet to harden the meat.
The diet of peanuts gives the meat a rich nutty flavor regarded
by many as much superior to the strictly corn-fed hog.
Brooks county has successful farmers from all parts of the
nation, among them men from Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina,
Florida and Mississippi.
In order to standardize the ham product the Brooks County
Industrial Club early in the year 1915 reached an agreement with
the buyers in Quitman, the county seat, whereby all hams were
to be bought on a grade basis, and a set of rules and regulations
governing these grades was prepared, printed and posted all over
the county, establishing three grades—first, second and' third.
The merchants pledged the Industrial Club to pay a certain per
cent, higher for first grade than second, and for second grade
above third. This movement has greatly improved the grade of
Brooks county hams, as previously the hams were not properly
trimmed in instances, and parts of the bone left on which should
have been taken off to make the same a standard article.
What has been accomplished in the hog industry in Brooks
county is possible in at least fifty per cent, of the counties in
Georgia. The industry in that county started about forty years
ago, from the efforts of one man who came from North Carolina
and went into the raising of hogs.