Can Subsidies Save the Farmer?
Brand, H.
For the past eighty years the basic economic cause of agrarian movements in the U. S., as well as of government efforts to subsidize agriculture, has been the difference between prices received...
...Income, the difference between price and cost, is therefore considerably smaller per unit for the latter than for the former...
...i.e., by destroying insects, weeds, and even by "stream-lining" the crop plant itself through defoliation...
...Now, history had shown that, as prices fell, the farmer tended Summer 1954 • DISSENT • 279 to produce more, not less...
...Looking briefly at the kinds of mechanization that have taken place, we find that on January 1, 1952 there were in use over 4 million tractors, Summer 1954 • DISSENT • 275 nearly 900,000 grain combines, over 2.4 million trucks, etc...
...Whatever one may think of the methods used, or even the soundness of the concept itself, there was a broad social purpose behind this effort, a large view of a real problem in American society...
...but neither originated with the farmers themselves...
...The cost of these chemicals amounts to 1 per cent of the farmer's gross income at present and will not exceed 5 per cent when intensively used.3 11 Have farmers gained by mechanization...
...They may not be fully representative in all they say or do of either stratum of the farming population, but the statements of Mr...
...Hitherto the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) had extended loans to farmers, or had made purchases from processors, of all commodities which came under the provisions of the AAA (as amended), at 90 per cent of their parity price...
...Brannan's proposals cannot be lightly dismissed...
...The key provisions of the "Brannan Plan" were: (1) direct payments to farmers at a given level of support prices, with market prices remaining free to find their own level...
...will be shown later, the mechanized and rationalized farms produce by far the greater value and volume of farm products even though they are in a numerical minority...
...its capital and labor resources are highly restricted and stationary...
...they have, so to speak, a "built-in" mechanism which minimizes administrative controls and which permits agricultural production to be guided by price rather than Summer 1954 • DISSENT • 281 by the "incentive" of high government supports...
...The dynamic force of mechanization is further illuminated by the rise in productivity between the period 1935-39 (= 100) and 1948-52: man hours for all farm work decreased to 86 but total farm output increased by 40 and volume of farm power and machinery increased by 66 (for 1953 a total rise of 88 index points was indicated) . It is not without interest to show in what way labor savings were achieved in 1944 in comparison with the period 1917-21...
...What had been political issues to the Populists, the Non-Partisan Leaguers, the Farmer-Labor people, became battles between rival bureaucracies in the Thirties and Forties...
...American agrarianism, undoubtedly one of the mainsprings of American democracy and one of the major sources of radicalism in the past, has exhausted its social and political possibilities...
...isfactory income through volume, with a smaller 129, 82d Cong., p. 15...
...3 per cent of individuals hold 41 per cent of all farm lands...
...REFERENCE NOTES period during which price parity between in dustry and agriculture is held to have been 1 "The ownership of machinery creates cer-1:1, i.e., optimum...
...for such intervention always results in a loss of socio-economic focus...
...Its chief task therefore has been and is to bring to bear the disproportionate electoral weight of the farmer upon national and state legislatures, and to insure its own dominance over both formulation and implementation of policy...
...See "Price Programs of the tain fixed costs which eat into profit when vol-USDA...
...Cooper, Barton and Brodell, "Progress of Farm Times, May 7, 1954...
...For the past eighty years the basic economic cause of agrarian movements in the U. S., as well as of government efforts to subsidize agriculture, has been the difference between prices received and prices paid by the farmer...
...The great abundance of land in the U. S. in the nineteenth century made extensive agriculture possible...
...however, the consumer's diet was far more varied and complex than it had been 50 or 100 years before...
...and with the help of the cotton-picker, man hours needed to produce a bale of cotton have declined from 155 in 276 • DISSENT • Summer 1954 1940 to slightly more than 10 today...
...and that the taxpayers would foot the bill for the consumers (i.e., many of whom pay no or little taxes...
...An attempt will be made 274 • DISSENT • Summer 1954 (3) to analyze some of the policies of the U. S. Department of Agriculture (referred to as USDA) ; and finally (4), the price support methods proposed by the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), and enacted in 1948, though not yet fully enforced, will be contrasted with the "Brannan Plan," supported by the National Farmers Union (NFU) . I Industrialization of agriculture, both mechanical and chemical, has so vastly increased productivity that, in the absence of governmentguaranteed prices, production restrictions and similar devices, only largescale operations, involving as they do low per-unit costs and low per-unit profits, are becoming economically feasible.' The number of persons who could be sustained by the work of one farm worker (i.e., hired or owner-operator) rose between 1820 and 1900 from 4.52 to 8.05...
...1952...
...If a farmer can sell his produce on the market above the parity price he does so, or, if he has stored it in a CCC warehouse as collateral against a loan, he takes it out again, repays the loan which was in the amount of 90 per cent of the parity price, and pockets the difference...
...True, flexible supports favor the big farmer whose efficiency is great, whose costs are therefore low, who produces suf ficient volume to compete in a market which, though prices cannot fall below a minimum, is not free from risk (risks which for him spell loss rather than ruin...
...Pub...
...its operations are necessarily of small scope and, but for government intervention, it would have to rely on a precarious market to realize an uncertain return...
...Flexible supports also mean a relatively minor degree of government intervention in agriculture...
...April 1949...
...The control efficiency of the new chemicals today is nearly 100 per cent...
...profit per unit...
...For example, acreage restrictions were not more severe in the case of the big farmer than in that of the small...
...the period 1910-1914 as a base, that is, a 1949...
...During this same period output per farm worker rose to 139 (1910-14 = 100), farm employment declined from 12.1 million to 10.9 million and crop yields per harvested acre increased by 5 per cent...
...Quite logically, this plan provides that production beyond a stipulated number of units will not be price-supported...
...Industry, on the other hand, has long since been centralized...
...Because of the former, yields of wheat in Oklahoma, for example, have increased 400 per cent, hybrid corn production 30 per cent...
...Unfortunately no data exists to the writer's knowledge which relates this concentration in land to the value of crops produced on it...
...Nor have government credit policies been helpful to the small farmer, except inconsequentially...
...However, the stringency of their collateral requirements, combined with the fact that the National Farm Loan Associations—through which any loan must be made and which are held partly accountable for its repayment—are dominated by the wealthier farmers and county bankers, militates against the small farmer benefiting from them...
...The focus of political and social power has shifted to the big cities...
...The economically weak and inefficient farmers have thus been making way for the stronger and efficient farmers...
...Hence the sharp limitations to its influence...
...Marketing quotas, based on past marketings, encouraged improvement of quality, thus raising the price of the commodity in question but thereby also the pressure against restricting its production...
...makes it possible for a farmer to obtain a sat-5 "Parity Handbook," Senate Document No...
...U It is widely recognized that the movement of labor resources from agricultural to non-agricultural occupations, together with the progressive accumulation and concentration of capital on the land, is a tendency which adversely affects the small farmer first...
...Mechanization," USDA Misc...
...their income in 1949 was $5.5 billion, or 24.8 per cent of total gross farm income...
...Further declines in farm labor are a virtual certainty, given the constant advances in agricultural productivity and consequent necessity for increasing capital investment...
...But its significance would be vastly overshadowed by developments in the unions, the Democratic Party, etc...
...the N.Y...
...The idea of price supports for agricultural commodities by means of government storage programs or export subsidies was not original with the New Deal...
...For the average farmer is concerned not with price but with income...
...The act under which it was established expressly forbids it to grant loans for carrying on any sort of collective or cooperative type of farming operation...
...So long as massive government subsidies to agriculture continue, so long as the surplus small farmer can be absorbed in urban occupations, no change in the political complexion of rural areas is to be expected...
...Its success in this has been such that one cannot speak of it as a mere "pressure group...
...Rather, it may be said to have accelerated the process of dissolution...
...Times, Nov...
...At the same time, mechanization No...
...At least in the U. S., this attempt has not been successful...
...A ten-foot disk plow, however, drawn by a 20-hp...
...The problem of American agriculture has been and remains a problem of uneven social development within the framework of capitalism...
...These will continue to enhance the power of conservatism in the U. S. If, however, because of a depression or a sharp recession, the small farmer were to find opportunities outside of agriculture closed to him, some sort of agrarian radicalism might once again arise...
...Both might be viewed as long-run means to forestall a possible radicalization of the small farmer in times of actual or threatening depression, when there can be little or no movement from the land into non-agricultural employment...
...The Brannan Plan—notwithstanding the frequent praise it has won from 282 • DISSENT • Summer 1954 liberals—was an attempt to stem the process of technological change by essentially reactionary measures which would have made a large sector of the population parasitically dependent upon government largesse...
...that a "ceiling on opportunity in agriculture" would be imposed by it...
...Nor is the AFBF contention that a "ceiling on opportunity in agriculture" would be imposed by the income payment eligibility provisions of the Brannan Plan without substance...
...Private and government research and experimentation and resulting yield increases presume a large scale production potential...
...due to the field associated with their use, which 8 D. Gale Johnson, "Trade and Agriculture...
...Since 1933 farm population has declined from 30 million to about 24 million persons (20 per cent) ; farm units have declined by one million...
...The next group, with a yearly income of above $10,000, but below $25,000, comprises about 380,000, or 7.1 per cent, of all U. S. farms...
...the small farmer, at best, stagnates...
...World War I stimulated the expansion of agriculture everywhere, but by 1923 the international market had reasserted its dominance and falling prices threatened entire national systems of agriculture with ruination...
...Similar striking savings in labor are achieved by combines, milking machines and cotton pickers.2 Machines can not only be more effectively and more intensively exploited than horses (whom they have largely replaced, accounting for the release of 55 million acres for crops other than horse feeds), they permit a speed of operations inconceivable with animals...
...A more realistic approach to comparative incomes in city and country would quite likely contribute to a sharp reappraisal of present policies of sub sidization...
...And it is a question which is not merely "interesting" but which derives its significance from the claim of farmers' representatives in and out of Congress that agricultural prices must be government-supported if they are to have parity with the prices the farmer pays...
...Thus, in 1949, over one-half of gross farm income went to 9 per cent of all U. S. farms...
...But if the raising of prices was to be made effective with some degree of permanency and without prolonged direct interference by the government in the autonomous price mechanism, the basic policy had to be one of scarcity...
...the increases due to the application of chemicals are just beginning...
...It is unlikely that it will ever play as important a role in the national life as it once did...
...The latter's production volume is always large enough, the relatively high degree of flexibility of his enterprise in regard to extent of acreage, his technical means, the availability of seasonal labor, the facility with which he can obtain credit, the easy access he has to marketing ,institutions (not in physical terms but in terms of social and economic status)—all this permits him "to take his chances with price...
...15, 1953...
...it can shift the burden of low prices to society as a whole by such moves as dismissing its workers...
...Thereby it is effectively prevented from undertaking a serious program of counteracting the decline of family farming...
...There is a good deal to be said for the arguments of the AFBF in favor of flexible price supports and their objections to Mr...
...Can it be said that the returns on their production efforts have been brought into some degree of balance with those of industrial labor...
...VI What can be concluded, then, from this shift in the economics, the social structure and the political makeup of American agricultural life...
...See The Agricultural Situation, Sept...
...As of tural Economics, USDA...
...None of the great issues which have in the past contributed to revolutions in Europe and which are still posed today in many parts of Asia has ever seriously affected American agriculture...
...The prevailing trend is weakening and will eventually destroy the small farmer who has not been able to devise his own means of political and Summer 1954 • DISSENT • 283 economic struggle...
...Also on "Farming's Chemical Age," on distribution of farm income were taken from by E. Hodgins, Fortune, Nov...
...1947...
...Both were governmentsponsored...
...If a 14-in...
...Thus the big farmer receives from the government what is analogous to a "differential ground rent...
...This vast increase in output was related to both a relative decline in farm labor manpower and to increasing mechanization...
...III The Department of Agriculture's policies, whatever their avowed intention—the intention originating with Congress, whose representatives are responsible to many small farmers—have greatly promoted this inequality of farm income, hence also the concentration of land in progressively 278 • DISSENT • Summer 1954 fewer hands...
...A 15-hp...
...Yet parity income, as contrasted with parity prices, has not been of much concern to the statistical agencies of the USDA...
...The Farmers Home Administration, which superseded the FSA, is essentially nothing more than a bank...
...Government subsidization of the farmer has been an attempt to rescue the small property owner from the irresistible pressures of modern technology with its socializing tendencies...
...5 What is meant by this "inequality" and what promotes it...
...Patton, president of the NFU, quite clearly indicate what is at stake...
...But there seems a study of inconsistent policies," Wiley, 1950, little question that the trend is toward com-demonstrates this contention on the basis of plete mechanization in the Cotton Belt...
...tractor, drawing the same type of plow and also operating for ten hours, will plow eight acres...
...The approach of USDA has facilitated this discrepancy, for its role has been "neutral," its restrictive measures being applied without differentiating among income strata...
...Acreage restrictions simply encouraged more intensified cultivation and hybrid breeding, producing higher per acre yields...
...quoted approvU.S...
...This political atrophy was the inevitable consequence of large-scale government intervention in agriculture...
...The basic emphasis of the AAA, like that of all the other major programs of the New Deal, was not on the structural causes of the depression but on price...
...Here it is at least conceivable that the replacement of the migratory labor pool by projects of efficiently operated family farms seasonally combining their labor and technical resources, would be a legitimate objective of government policy...
...at the same time, farms of 1,000 acres or over have increased by 80 per cent and those of 500 to 1,000 acres by about 40 per cent...
...Henceforth the price supports were no longer to be "rigid," i.e., independent of existing stocks...
...both were serious attempts to deal with critical situations...
...Government policy, no matter what its momentary emphasis, has over the past few decades promoted this process of displacing the small farmer, despite the possibly sincere belief of Washington administrators that they were helping him...
...9 For details on the activities of the CCC, 1953...
...There exist about 103,000 farms in this group, or 1.9 per cent of all farms...
...the volume increase is not to any significant degree due to use of additional land...
...output per worker to 324...
...March 31 the CCC owned outright over $2,790 million worth of farm products...
...By averaging all U. S. farms not only are distinctions between income strata obliterated but labor returns data are weighted downward to a far greater degree than warranted...
...The increases in agricultural productivity and production due to mechanization are far from ended...
...The abolition of the Federal Security Administration (FSA) in 1946 marked the end of an endeavor to counteract the effects of agricultural industrialization upon the small farm on a basis which would integrate both...
...mechanization made it feasible...
...In the U. S., the various McNary-Haugen bill, introduced into Congress but never enacted into law, presaged, in essence though not in scope, the New Deal's Agricultural Adjustment Acts of the 1930s...
...To the extent to which an answer is given to our question, it is further obscured by the practice of averaging all U. S. commercial farms, the high ly mechanized ones as well as those where hand and animal labor still pre dominate...
...Since 1840 the ratio of farm labor to the total labor force has declined by roughly 5 per cent every ten years...
...Clearly, those leaving agriculture were concerned not with prices but with income...
...699, Dec...
...13, 1953...
...But the index of farm employment had risen to only 140...
...Reclamation as well as the use of lowyield and therefore cheap land has become commercially feasible due to new herbicides...
...Those bearing 4. The USDA determines these prices with on concentration in land from "Farm Land the aid of a monthly parity index, which uses Ownership," USDA Misc...
...for this not only implied a long-range threat to the established patterns of social relations on the land, but also raised the immediate and practical issue of a cheap labor supply...
...Furthermore, income payments and enforcement of eligibility rules would necessitate a very large measure of administrative control...
...If prices are to bear any relation to cost, this means that in formulating them the relatively high cost of the small farmer's operation must be taken into account...
...Also available are fungicides which protect the seed of wheat and sorghums...
...The NFU not only supported the Brannan Plan but went further by demanding government-supported prices at 100 per cent of parity...
...The outstanding provision of this act is the supplanting of "rigid" by "flexible" 280 • DISSENT • Summer 1954 price supports...
...How much labor does this machinery save...
...Moreover, given its nearly inexhaustible technological versatility, modern industry has attained a high degree of control over changing economic conditions, be they price fluctuations, raw material supplies, labor mobility or marketing...
...N.Y...
...Plowing and seeding can then be crowded into a few days towards the end of the season...
...The AFBF levied numerous objections to the Brannan Plan, some of which are worth dealing with here for the light they shed on the problem...
...Compared to their previous status farmers certainly have gained...
...7 but with these surface problems the whole question of the social structure of American agriculture was to be raised...
...corporations 6 per cent and the rest is owned by government...
...tractor for ten hours will open up twenty-eight acres of soil...
...The cost-per-unit of the big operator with his large physical plant is obviously smaller than that of the less efficient farmer, but support prices for their produce are the same for both...
...Thus, the socio-economic processes here described have gradually undercut the possibility of independent agrarian politics...
...The existence of this pool—abetted as it is by the all but open collusion between private interests and public authorities— not only tends to debase agricultural labor conditions, health and education standards as well as wages generally but, given its "cheapness" and ready availability, it acts as a brake upon technological advance...
...And both were conditioned by the political atrophy of American agrarianism...
...The new chemical crop controls make possible a further intensification of land use not by adding to soil fertility but by making soil fertility almost entirely available to the commercial crop...
...the old insecticides rarely exceeded 60 per cent...
...Now, when it is considered that only about 27 per cent of farm labor is hired, it becomes clear that it is the family unit which is gradually being wiped out...
...By this same logic, flexible price supports, if carried through consistently, must eliminate the smaller and inefficient farmer with his necessarily small operating margin...
...and this not merely because of sustained government subsidies, but also because of the widespread use of a vast pool of foreign and native "migratory" labor...
...rather, they were in all cases based on past harvested acreage...
...And the age distribution of other equipment is not dissimilar...
...moldboard plow is used for ten hours, drawn by two horses, with a man walking behind, two acres can be plowed...
...The very term "farmer" implies both freely transferable ownership of land unencumbered by traditional landlord-tenant obligations, and involvement in the impersonal market economy, indebtedness to an impersonal banking system...
...Even so, it is contended by some authorities that restrictive measures have not done anything towards raising prices...
...Despite a decline in agricultural prices from 100 (1910-14) to 84 (1935-39), the farmers' real labor returns (i.e., their real income) rose by 21 per cent...
...It is true that since about 1947 the Federal Land Banks have somewhat liberalized their loan policies...
...It has been strictly concerned with individual small farmers, extending small loans to them for rehabilitation, farm purchases, etc...
...The following will (1) briefly survey this process of industrialization as well as (2) income distribution in U. S. agriculture...
...But, as...
...A considerable proportion of large-scale agriculture in the U. S. operates profitably only because its actual costs are thrown upon society as a whole...
...volume of farm power and mechanical equipment to 542 and availability of such equipment per worker to 387...
...By contrast, the AFBF has succeeded not only in its original aim, which was to curb agrarian radicalism...
...I believe the gross income of a farm producing 1,800 units would be around $10,000 a year, far higher than the average income of the bulk of U. S. farms, but Brannan was deliberately generous in this) ; (3) a new parity formula was introduced which made a first attempt at substituting income for price as the basis for parity...
...Interestingly, the volume of increase in crops since the period 1935-39 is identical with the increase of crop production per acre since that time, i.e., 33 per cent...
...1949, p. 1105-a6...
...4 For the violent fluctuations to which prices of agricultural commodities are subject, in the face of the relative fixity of the farmer's land, labor and capital resources, would otherwise bring eventual ruin to the countryside...
...the nomics, Nov...
...But, as we will see, despite the existence of government-guaranteed parity prices for some twenty years, there has been an unabated exodus from agriculture into other occupations...
...The struggle over agricultural legislation this spring is simply over the degree to which the long-range provisions of the 1948 act should become fully effective...
...Agriculture is still largely based on a multitude of family-owned and operated units, atomized, with high fixed costs, unable to curtail production yet prey to widely fluctuating prices...
...Kline, president of the AFBF, and those of Mr...
...This can mean a prosperous crop as against no crop or a very poor one, in case, for example, there has been a wet spring...
...Allan Kline, president of 6 Goeffrey S. Shepherd, "Agricultural Prices AFBF, at the Hearing on the General Farm and Income Policy," Iowa State College Press, Program, part 3, serial R, p. 438...
...of time...
...2 Cotton pickers appear not as yet to have 7 Grove and Koffsky, Journal of Farm Ecofound wide-spread acceptance by planters...
...By 1945 the farm worker could of course devote far more of his time to actual agricultural work and needed less for such chores as care of draft animals and building maintenance...
...IV In organizational terms this question is posed, on the one hand, by the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), chief spokesman of the commercial farming interests, and, on the other, by the National Farmers Union (NFU), exponent of the small farmer...
...it is a quasi-public organization, whose nuclei, the AFBF county secretaries, are in personal union with government officers, the county agents of the USDA Extension Service...
...More than half of the farm lands held by individuals is in lots of 500 acres or more...
...The chemical destruction of sage brush in Colorado would increase the value of beef there from $2 per acre to $7...
...A two-row cultivator, drawn by three horses for ten hours will cultivate twelve acres of corn or cotton...
...It has not preserved a rural community of self-reliant farmers —a Jeffersonian ideal still upheld by many good, but nevertheless naive persons...
...This does not mean, however, that the efficiency of a farm is always or necessarily tied to its scale of operations...
...The age distribution of this equipment was quite favorable: for the U. S. as a whole, an average of 52 per cent of three major types of tractors was then in use 5 years or less...
...At no time in the past fifteen years has the NFU attempted a reappraisal of the social position of the small farmer and of the possible consequences flowing therefrom...
...the other 91 per cent grossed less than half of this income...
...census of 1950 does not list them...
...In a sense, the Brannan Plan was the very opposite of the FSA...
...In legislative terms the issues are expressed, though not without a degree of obscurity resulting from half-hearted and expedient compromise, by the Agricultural Act of 1948, and by the "Brannan Plan...
...But then one of the chief reasons for the successful attack upon the FSA was its ever-so-timid attempt at cooperative family farming...
...Agricultural Information Bulletin ume is reduced...
...Furthermore, in the absence of risks which unguaranteed prices would constitute, he can improve his plant and expand his operations...
...a publication of the Bureau of Agricul-see "Price Programs of the USDA...
...It is, furthermore, the consensus among some agricultural Summer 1954 • DISSENT • 277 economists that, since 1945 at least, no income disparity between farmers as a whole and other economic groups exists, that "average equality for agriculture has been achieved in part at the expense of greater relative inequality within agriculture...
...they were to range from 60 per cent to 90 per cent depending on whether stocks were plentiful or low...
...it had "in 3 The materials used in section I of this vested" close to $3,439 million in loans on such article are based largely (though brought up to products, making a total of close to $6,230 date where possible) on the excellent study of million tied up in price support programs...
...Individuals hold 85 per cent of all cultivated, grass and wooded land...
...It is seen then that mechanization accounts for only 48 per cent of all savings, the other 52 per cent consisting of: increased yields per acre (19 per cent) , increased size of enterprise and increased production per animal (13 per cent), spreading of overhead costs over a larger volume of production (7 per cent), changes in method, work simplification, etc...
...27 per cent) . The basis for this rationalization of agricultural production clearly is mechanization...
...8 Stated bluntly: the small farmer's inefficiency is rewarded, the big farmer's efficiency is penalized...
...2) only those farmers were eligible to receive the payments whose total production did not exceed a certain limit (1,800 production units, the unit being variously defined, depending on the commodity...
...The scarcity policy of the USDA was bound to affect the income of the small farmer far more decisively than that of the big farmer...
...Its objections include: that the plan means government-controlled farm income, prices and production...
...The use of artificial fertilizer solved the problem of chemical exhaustion of the soil and thus brought about a combination of extensive and intensive cultivation...
...That there is a tendency towards concentration in land is also an established fact...
...but a 15-hp...
...another 20 per cent 6 to 10 years...
...if he cannot sell it on the market, he leaves it in the warehouse, omits repaying the loan and it becomes government property...
...The family farm cannot possibly match this...
...In thus posing the differences between FSA and the Brannan Plan, what was common to both must not be disregarded...
...In 1949 there were approximately 5.3 million farms in the U. S., of which 3.7 million were commercial, i.e., derived all of their income from the sale of crops...
...But this does not answer the question put at the beginning of this paragraph...
...it can today take for granted the political and ideological passivity of the American farmer, who has come to expect as a matter of course that the government will take the initiative in all questions of agricultural policy...
...World War II, bringing a period of world-wide rising prices, merely postponed facing the critical nature of the problem of surpluses and the mounting costs of government agricultural policies...
...The various proposals of the NFU, most authentic representative of the small farmer, have been focussed—unavoidably, perhaps, in this period—upon shifts and modifications in present government policies...
...The latter attempted to overcome the decline of the family farm by going to the social roots of the problem—i.e., by introducing structural changes which might eventually enable the small farmer, basing himself on cooperative methods of agricultural production, to compete with the commercial farms...
...Taking 1870 as 100, total farm output by 1946 had risen to 453...
...today it is about 12 per cent...
...284 • DISSENT • Summer 1954...
...The gross income of the latter farms amounted in 1949 to 21.7 billion, of which $5.7 billion, or 26 per cent went to farms whose incomes exceeded $25,000 annually...
...This is ingly by Goeffrey S. Shepherd, op...
...over-AAA reports on the effects of its activities on coming the present difficulties is a mere matter prices...
...630, NOTE: The figures, in section II, bearing Oct...
...if drawn by five horses four acres can be plowed in that time...
...so that by enlarging his volume of production, he attempted to overcome the effect of low prices...
...Publ...
...1953...
...and by 1945 to 14.54...
...tractor drawing a four-row cultivator can cultivate thirty-five acres during that time...
...makes human labor preferable...
...It has spurred the industrialized agricultural plant, operated by scientifically trained personnel for whom farming is either a job or a commercial enterprise, but no longer a way of life...
Vol. 1 • July 1954 • No. 3
