The Augusta Courier

Many Advantages For Dairy Farming Found In Georgia

ATLANTA. — Georgia's farmer-governor Herman Talmadge thinks there is a great opportunity in this state for further expansion of dairy farming. Speaking at the first annual Putnam Dairy Festival, held recently in Eatonton, in which he praised Putnam County folk for "showing the world" how to recover from economic disaster, the Governor said:

"Georgia offers many advantages to the dairy industry. Mild climate makes year-round grazing possible. Water is plentiful and the soil is good. Great markets are available, both near home and in the heavily populated cities of the East. We are as close to these great Eastern markets as are the great dairy states of the Middle West.

"To me, as a dairy farmer, there is nothing better on earth than a successful dairy farm. Along with Putnam County, Georgia as a state has moved forward rapidly in dairy production. The country as a whole has the smallest number of milk cows in 20 years while the number of cows in Georgia herds increased 15,000 last year.

"But there is still room for improvement. Georgia dairy farmers produce less than half of the total milk equivalent of all dairy products consumed and

our consumption is not up to the national average. It is well to note that all evaporated and dry milk solids we use, as well as a large proportion of the butter and cheese we consume, come from other states."

Pointing out that Putnam County dairy cooperatives and independent dairymen last year produced close to $2-million worth of dairy products, Talmadge said this is in sharp contrast to the conditions existing when the boll weevil attacked "this great cotton growing county in 1922 and virtually destroyed cotton production, leaving vast fields which were nearly worthless because of the erosion that followed.

"From an economically stricken community, it has advanced to the point where this county, for its size, has the greatest concentration of dairy production of any county in the entire nation "