An 1864 article from the U.S. Commissioner of Agriculture's report, written by M. D. Landon of Helena, Arkansas, describing how 1,040 acres of cotton were raised with free (formerly enslaved) labor. It covers seed selection and chemical analysis, soil preparation, planting, cultivation, insect pests (cotton louse, grass caterpillar, cotton army worm), ginning, and picking. It also gives a wage table for freedmen and an estimate of production costs per acre.

A practical essay on growing and preparing flax, written from the author's 27 years of experience in Ireland and addressed to American farmers during the Civil War cotton shortage. It covers soil, ploughing, seed sowing, pulling, rippling, steeping (retting), and spreading, with cost and return tables for an acre of unrotted and of rotted flax. It also covers raising two crops in one season, tests of late-pulled samples at Pusey's mill in Wilmington, flax-cotton as a cotton substitute, the flax flea, and a proposal for local scutch mills.