University of Virginia Library

Soil Conservation and Livestock Production

Despite labor shortages, the rationing of farm machinery, marketing
difficulties, and complicated price changes, a general upward trend
in food production was achieved. This was due in part to changes
in agricultural practices.

One significant local development was the increase in pasture land
acreage during the last year or two of the war. The following figures
show that in 1945 acreage for pastures was double that of 1942:

         

Year	Acres in Cropland	Acres in Orchard	Acres in Pasture
1942	85,823.8	12,468.4	43,436.6
1943	87,056.1	12,403.1	44,940.1
1944	90,930.8	11,727.5	47,587.5
1945	103,154.0[*]	103,154.0[*]	86,906.6[28]

Not only were there more pastures, but their quality was improved.
Greater quantities of lime and superphosphate were used during the
first two years of the war than in previous years, and still more in
1944. By 1945 twice as much fertilizer as in preceding years was
applied on many farms, resulting in a high yield per acre. Each year
extensive plantings of winter legumes, rye grass, and alfalfa were

made, permitting longer grazing seasons and shorter barn feeding
periods.[29]

Conservationist John A. Smart estimated that 55,000 acres in
Albemarle had been submitted to conservation practices, to which a
twenty per cent increase in production might be attributed. Some
fifteen per cent of the county was engaged in carrying out terracing
and strip cropping in 1944. The soil of two of the farms once owned
by Jefferson, “Tufton” and “Shadwell,” was being restored.[30]

A striking example of these practices is the story of transformations
made on H. V. Herold's farm, “Holkham,” near Ivy. Aside
from the sheer beauty of the harmonious contours of this farm, here
was demonstrated what can be achieved when man respects the soil
instead of taking all it can offer while giving it back nothing in
return. Ninety of Herold's 220 acres were uncultivated in 1936,
the year his practice of soil conservation was begun. Slopes were
bare and, in consequence, badly eroded. Rows of corn were planted
“up and down.” Lespedeza and peas alone comprised the hay crops;
none of the hay was fertilized. Land used for pasture was in great
part overrun with saw-briars and broomsedge. Stock could be
grazed, therefore, only five months each year, and the owner was
compelled annually to buy about $400 worth of hay. His cows
required large amounts of grain, which was not raised on his farm,
so that he was forced to buy his entire supply of dairy feed grain.
When the United States entered the war, he had been practicing
scientific farming for six years. Consequently, he was in a position
to make heavy demands of his soil, while at the same time he was
able to conserve its value. Trees had been planted on his hillsides
to prevent the soil from washing away under heavy rains; fields
were strip cropped instead of gullied; planting rows followed the
natural contours of the land; minimum loss of topsoil was incurred;
annual harvests increased amazingly. One acre of corn planted in
land thus properly utilized produced as much as four or five acres
had previously brought forth. One third of the pastures were fertilized
every year. Alfalfa was planted to replace broomsedge on
five acres, and the barns were full of hay by June of each of the war
years. By 1945 the owner was growing a large part of the grains
needed by his herds: he was harvesting some 1,500 bushels of oats
from thirty acres and about fifteen tons of corn per acre for silage.
Because of these better farming techniques—and also, admittedly,
because of a substantial rise in prices—the income received from his
milk production quadrupled between 1936 and 1945.[31]

The touring author of an article on the advantages of soil conservation
which was published in a nationally circulated magazine
soon after the war ended observed that rural Virginia was having
its face lifted by scientific farming practices. In Albemarle County
this traveler found an ardent and quotable convert to the new agricultural

“Holkham,” the H. V. Herold farm near Ivy, is a model of soil
conservation.

Richard Overton and his wife, soil conservationists, display a war
product.

order in the person of S. A. Jessup. Impressed with Jessup's
excellent pastures and purebred Guernseys, the visitor was told
that Jessup had redeemed lands once so exhausted that one “couldn't
even raise a disturbance” on them. The proud livestock grower added,
“I'd just as soon raise polecats on my farm as corn or tobacco.”[32]

A greater quantity and better quality of beef cattle were raised in
Albemarle during the years 1942–1943 than previously due to the
extension of pasture lands and to the greater care which was given
to the breeding of stock and the control of parasites and diseases. In
the winter of 1943–1944 a government hay-subsidy program was
carried out to compensate for the effects of the 1943 drought. Production
of beef cattle was thereby maintained at a high level. In the
summer of 1944 another drought brought a decline in hay and pasture
production, and heavy rains in the fall also damaged the hay
crops along the James River. Nevertheless, the output for the county
was higher than during preceding years. T. O. Scott estimated that
some farms had as much as four times as many animal units as in
previous years. So great an expansion in cattle production had its
repercussions. One of these was that marketing facilities, which had
been adequate in 1940, were inadequate in 1944.[33]

Livestock production ranked third in importance as a source of
income to Albemarle County farmers by 1943. Auction sales of
feeder calves were begun in 1941. Prior to 1939 calves had been
raised on a hit or miss basis, but after new methods of feeding were
adopted, as suggested by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and the
Albemarle Feeder Calf Producers Association was organized, the
business rose in importance. The sale in October, 1941, brought in
a total of $14,832.00 for 290 calves; the following year 476 calves
sold for $30,000.00.[34]

Not the least enthusiastic among the livestock raisers of the county
were 4-H Club boys, both white and Negro, who carried out livestock
projects during each of the war years and competed in contests
sponsored by Sears Roebuck and Company. At the Angus sale in
the spring of 1944 calves raised by these boys won favorable attention.
Some of these schoolboys built up herds of their own: others
fattened only one or two animals for the market. While the number
of their cattle was only a small part of the total production in
the county, the real importance of this work, directed mainly by
H. M. Brumback, lay in the training and experience gained by a
generation which might become the future cattle, hog, and poultry
raisers of the locality.[35]

A comparison between the cattle raised in Albemarle County and
their value in the years 1940 and 1945 shows a marked increase.

       

	1940	1945
Farms reporting	1,974	1,970
Number of cattle and calves	16,779	22,576
Value	$633,540	$1,613,040[36]

Advancing in step with the agronomy program, the dairy industry
benefitted from the general improvement and expansion of pasture
lands which permitted longer grazing seasons. As methods of
breeding dairy cattle were perfected and disease and parasites were
controlled, milk production rose during each of the war years until
1945. Shortages of labor, farm machinery, and protein supplements
explained the slight decline of that year. A total of 3,119,606 gallons
was produced in 1945, however, as compared with 2,593,668
in 1940, and the value of dairy products sold in the county rose
from $282,590 in 1940 to $518,925 in 1945.[37]

An increase of nearly 2,000 hogs in Albemarle County between
1940 and 1945 may not have been surprising. Residents of Sixth
Street, S. E., in Charlottesville, who seemed as interested in producing
“food for victory” as their fellow citizens of the county, petitioned
the City Council for the extension of hog-raising zones so
they might fulfil their patriotic obligations. Pig pens on the back
side of their lots would not be near their neighbors, they argued.
City Health Director T. S. Englar admitted that, although hogs normally
do not enhance a city's peace and cleanliness, they might have
to be excused during the emergency. “After all,” he said, “there are
swine in some sections already and, conditions remaining the same,
a pig near Rugby Road is little different from his cousin in Belmont.”
As long as rules of decency and everyday sanitation were observed,
styes were kept a reasonable distance from kitchen doors, and winds
held their proper direction, the doctor supposed that the hog in the
yard movement might not be too objectionable. Faced for the third
time with the issue, the City Council finally voted that hogs might
be kept in the city limits only if their pens were more than 250 feet
from the nearest dwelling and if their location was approved by the
Chief of Police. The required distance automatically eliminated from
conversion to pork production all but a few lots within the city.
At the time, in February, 1942, there were sixty-seven hog owners
in the city. Their number could hardly be much enlarged under the
new ordinance, but city dwellers who dreamed of fat porkers in their
back yards would probably have forced an immediate reconsideration
of the question if they had foreseen the price advances which
were later to make them recall with acute nostalgia that they had
been able even after Pearl Harbor to buy a pound of bacon for
twenty-six cents and two pounds of fresh spareribs for less than
forty cents.[38]

Although there was only an inconsequentially small increase during
the war years in Albemarle County's sheep population, their value
rose from $21,362 to $37,365—a pair of figures which provides an
eloquent commentary on the wartime price spiral. The increase from
3,568 sheep in 1940 to 3,764 in 1945 might have been greater but
for such factors as the difficulties of procuring wire for fencing,

the omnipresent labor shortage, and fear of predatory dogs. There
was more improvement in the quality than in the quantity of local
sheep, largely because of efficient control of internal parasites and
vigilant prevention of disease.[39]

Poultry was still another product of Albemarle County farms
which enlisted in the war effort. When all other edible meats except
fish were rationed, poultry took on new significance, and eggs were
also in unprecedented demand. Home Demonstration agents and
4-H Club leaders gave invaluable help to owners of small flocks
as well as to commercial producers of fryers, broilers, eggs, and turkeys.
Nearly every farm in the county had its poultry flock. Perfected
methods of feeding, housing, and culling were adopted; parasites
were effectively controlled. Scott contrasted the heavy losses
of diseased fowl which were annually incurred during the earlier part
of his eighteen years of experience in Albemarle County with the
decreased mortality of the war years. Prevention of disease, in his
opinion, contributed in large measure to the increased production of
poultry called for in the local market and by the War Food Administration.
The Department of Agriculture determined that the 88,360
chickens in the county in 1940 were valued at $50,365, while the
115,411 chickens in 1945 were worth $139,647. In other words,
their value was increased by 180 per cent, though their number was
increased only thirty per cent—again a significant commentary on
what happened to the purchasing power of the American dollar
despite price control. Income from all poultry products sold by
farms reporting to the department increased from $147,737 to $375,
658 during the same five years.

Official statistics of the Department of Agriculture have reported
that the total income to Albemarle County farmers from sales of all
types of livestock and livestock products rose from $815,087 in
1940 to $1,813,736 in 1945. The total value of all livestock classified
by the Department increased during the same period from
$1,313,163 to $2,383,810.

Because of wartime restrictions upon transportation, the urgency
of the nation's need for the marketing of available meat, and a desire
to accommodate Charlottesville's “country cousins” of Albemarle
County, the City Council had rescinded its prewar ordinance prohibiting
the overnight storage of livestock within the city limits.
This action had benefitted the Charlottesville Livestock Market and
the producers who brought their animals to it for sale by auctions
which sometimes extended far into the night. Whether the animals
had been sold or not, it was often impossible to remove them from
the city before they disturbed would-be sleepers of the vicinity. After
V-J Day long-suffering residents of the area demanded a reenactment
of the prewar ordinance.[40] More than a year elapsed before a generally
agreeable solution to the problem was reached. The city purchased

the auction site, and the Livestock Market was relocated beyond
the city limits. But that is really a postwar story, and its
details are not for this volume.