Paper Shell Pecans

From the beginning of the world food production has been the most important of the activities of man—but food production has frequently taken uneconomic channels. Even before the war in Europe started, the tendency toward changing standards in food production was marked.

In one of America’s leading periodicals, we read: “Tree crops is the next big thing in farming,” says J. Russel Smith, after an 18,000–mile journey through the nut growing countries.

The man who is alert to changing food standards, who realizes how largely the cattle herds of the world have been depleted during the World War, who has learned how long it will be before they can be built up, will see in this condition an opportunity paralleled only in a small way by the noted investment opportunities of the past.

About a hundred years ago the railroad offered an investment opportunity which the Vanderbilts were wise enough to see—and to seize. You know that the Vanderbilt wealth has lasted through generations—increasing year by year.

About fifty years ago there was a similar opportunity offered in steel—demanded by the rapidly growing industries. The names of Carnegie and Schwab head the list of the famous “thousand steel millionaires”—made rich by foresight.

Forty years ago electricity offered its opportunities to Edison—and to many others who have become extremely wealthy because they combined courage with foresight.

Marvelous as have been the fortunes in railroads, in steel and in electricity, we are today, says the Luther Burbank Society in its book, “Give the Boy a Chance,” “facing an opportunity four hundred times bigger than the railroad opportunity was a hundred years ago, eight hundred times bigger than electricity offered at its inception, fifteen hundred times bigger than the steel opportunity which Mr. Carnegie found—because agriculture is just by these amounts bigger than those other industries.”

From land—the most permanent basis of wealth—immense fortunes of today and tomorrow are being drawn. America is beginning to see a new vision,—its agriculture is taking a newer, more profitable form.

What is the Biggest Future in Agriculture? When James J. Hill staked his all in apples and received in return a profit estimated at ten million dollars—he was merely a pioneer in the new type of farming.

Yet the pecan comes into bearing as early as the apple orchard and remains in bearing many times as long, says Bulletin No. 41, of the Alabama Department of Agriculture.

It is particularly significant that the strongest advocates of tree agriculture are those familiar with conditions in nut growing countries. Consider that fact in connection with this statement of Luther Burbank, the Edison of Agriculture: “Paper Shell Pecans of the improved varieties are the most delicious, as well as the most nutritious nuts in the world. They are higher in food value than any other nuts, either native or foreign.”

In a prominent agricultural weekly we read: “The tree that yields a pound or two of nuts at five years of age is counted upon for twenty to fifty pounds by the tenth year, and after that the yield grows beyond anything known in fruit trees, because the Pecan at maturity is a forest giant.”