The Daily Dispatch: March 29, 1862., [Electronic resource]

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Cultivate Wheat and Corn.

The importance of giving up the whole soil of the South to the cultivation of corn, wheat, and the necessaries of life, cannot be too strongly impressed on our people. We can no longer depend on the great grain-growing and cattle-raising States of Kentucky and Tennessee, which have hitherto been relied upon to supply our wants. The large crop of the last year has had vast demands upon it in the support of the army, and been wickedly wasted in the distillation of whiskey. The demands for horses and men for the use, of the army have seriously interfered in our own State, both last fall and this spring, with the preparation of the ground for cultivation. Our resources in the Valley of Virginia, in the West and Northwest, and in large portions of Eastern Virginia, will be cut off one half, if not two thirds, by the unsettled condition of the times. Under these circumstances, it behooves the planters and agriculturists of the South at large, and of our own State, to abandon entirely this year the raising of cotton and tobacco, and give up every foot of their soil to wheat, corn, and other food for man and beast. Every bushel of them will be required by our necessities, and will pay better than cotton and tobacco, with which the market will be glutted at the end of the war.