WILL FARMERS BE SUCKERS AGAIN?
Harding, T. Swann
Will Farmers Be Suckers Again? By T. SWANN HARDING THE specter of technological unemployment in the postwar period hovers over agriculture. What happens then depends largely upon whether we decide...
...Every time the average production per cow is increased 100 pounds a year we could take care of a 2 million increase in the population without increasing the number of dairy cows...
...Plans must be made now if we are to chose the former...
...But the fact that we are doing so well in farm production during wartime when labor, equipment, and materials are scarce, indicates that we could do superbly at peace, if we elect to do so...
...But, though agriculture is somewhat flushed by wartime prosperity, rural slums have not disappeared, and the farm plant is still partially archaic and worn-out...
...But, if consumption is to be geared to effective demand, "overproduction" can easily occur, while technological unemployment will be rife on farms...
...Part of this increase is due to concentration on the best cotton acreage, part to better fertilization and improved cultivation...
...By 1950 approximately 400,000 additional tractors should be in use on farms, each one capable of saving about 800 hours of man-labor per year...
...If we have postwar prosperity our people would also consume three times as many broilers as they formerly did, but one-fifth less beans than are now being grown...
...Within a decade we could produce food enough for twice as many people as we did in 1943...
...It is true also that the weather has been almost incredibly good for crop-growing these recent years, but even then we have every reason to expect average yields 20 per cent higher per acre than they were in the 1923-32 decade, just before the great droughts...
...But we can expand the area of cultivated land through wise use of irrigation, drainage, and clearing...
...But we civilians also ate food here at home at a rate 7 per cent above the 1935-39 level, while Lend-Lease and our armed forces disposed of one-quarter of our entire production...
...The Rural Electrification Administration has big plans for shooting electric power into hundreds of thousands more farms...
...This would, of course, involve greater agricultural use of manpower and equipment and drastic changes in our production and consumption habits...
...Record Farm Production Production per farm worker in 1944 was twice as great as in 1910, three-fourths greater than in 1917-18...
...Such are the potentialities...
...But food consumption can only attain such high levels if consumers have the money to buy, or devices are utilized to cut food costs artificially for the low-income classes...
...Some things that we have done at war have been constructive too...
...Wheat may be regarded more as livestock feed after than before the war, particularly where it will produce more value as such than any other crop...
...They have paid off indebtedness and bought bonds, but farm land is already changing hands at prices which indicate inflation is upon us...
...Do we want that sort of thing to happen again...
...While it looked as if we should have had 6 million more dairy cows to produce this additional milk, we actually had only 160,000 more...
...Wartime scarcities have kept them from doing so since 1939...
...It is a little better than that, but consumption of fewer potatoes and more of other vegetables would be beneficial for us...
...Then what about the other 4 million and their 4 or 5 dependents each...
...We shall undoubtedly shift to still greater use of mechanical power, while research scientists will continue to find better and better varieties of plants and animals and improved ways of protecting both from insects and infections...
...In early 1939 approximately 2 million farm families were on relief...
...The Secretary of Agriculture just recently told a Senate Committee that about two-thirds of the Nation's farm families are ill-housed, and that nearly half their inadequate houses are beyond repair...
...Growing industrialization of the Lake State Region has offered a new outlet for milk and milk products there...
...Furthermore, in Texas alone, the number of tractors on farms increased 50,000 between 1935 and 1938, and entirely displaced 10,000 farm families, or at least 50,-000 people, in that state in the same period...
...If sound nutrition for all is the objective, we can step our production of fresh and processed vegetables up one-half, though the demand for potatoes would then decline one-fifth...
...Are we to settle back after the war to production for the "effective" demand...
...This excess population was once rapidly drained off by city industry which is itself now more highly rationalized than ever before, with the greatest output per worker in our history...
...We are doing this for the same reason we did it in the Civil War and by the same means...
...More efficient food production contributes in turn to an increased output of livestock and livestock products per acre and per man-hour employed...
...Our farm production goal for 1945 has been set higher still...
...We "saved" 5,840,000 cows because we increased the milk production of the cows we had...
...Will we let dairy farmers do what is obviously necessary after the war, or shall we insist upon them producing only for "effective" demand...
...New machines will be developed for small farms, rendering them highly efficient also...
...Half of our farmers were simply not needed to clothe and feed those in cities, at the low standards of living common to most of these urban unfortunates...
...But, by 1950, we Americans should be using 144,000.000,000 pounds of milk a year, or one-fourth more than we actually did use in 1944, and even then we should have had around 140 billion pounds...
...The over-all farm labor force of 1944 was 2 per cent below 1943 and 10 per cent below the 1935-39 average...
...During that time 6,300,000 young persons immigrated from our farms to our cities, and it cost farmers an average of $2,000 each to rear and educate them...
...That would mean drastic shifts tuned to only an extreme emergency situation...
...We may continue a nationally high production of oil crops both for the oil and for high-class feed protein...
...We read of a new spinach harvester which saves $300 per hour in the wages of stoop labor formerly employed for the purpose...
...The number of family workers and hired workers on farms was 12 per cent less in 1938 than in 1909, though our population had increased 44 per cent during that time...
...Between 1921 and 1927 our consumption of milk increased 30 billion pounds a year...
...They largely went on relief or became migratory...
...These were the days of production for "effective" demand...
...Three million more had low incomes and were using archaic equipment, a technical inefficiency imposed upon them by poverty...
...Of course several factors enter into this increased production besides mechanization, but it all does represent rationalization of the agricultural industry...
...So, since they could not sell all the butter they made, dairy farmers were induced by posters, folders, and other appeals to eat more butter and less margarine themselves...
...After the war our farm output of wartime days can very easily be stepped up at least 15 per cent (given average weather conditions...
...But we have only to turn back to 1930 to find a leading dairy journal repining the overproduction of butter, a situation that sounds weird to us today...
...We read today of a new celery-planting machine which, operated by 8 girls, waters and plants 12,000 seedlings per hour...
...Add in rentals and other payments made by farmers to urbanites, and $25 billions is a low estimate...
...During the war, by stupendous efforts, special subsidies, and lavish use of feed, we have actually driven our annual production of milk to an all-time high of 119,000,000,000 pounds a year...
...In the incredibly "prosperous" period between 1920 and 1929 farm people made a net contribution to city people of 25 billion dollars...
...Soybean varieties now becoming available promise increases in yield comparable with those from hybrid corn...
...New disease-resistant varieties of wheat will out-yield older varieties by 5 to 10 per cent, while rust-and smut-resistant oats will outyield older varieties in the Corn Belt from 15 to 25 per cent...
...Even the number of milking machines increased 50 per cent during this time...
...Another thought is that, since 1920, the use of tractor and motor power on farms has released more than 60 million acres of crop and pasture land from feed production for workstock...
...Better breeding stock, control of disease, and improved feeding methods have done much to increase livestock production per worker since 1910...
...Take milk as an example...
...Yet farm population was increasing by nearly 450,000 a year—the greatest rate of increase being in the counties with the lowest income...
...Widespread utilization of mechanical cotton pickers, improved cotton strippers, the rice combine, the flame cultivator, the hay drier, and the manure loader is just around the corner...
...even though they may have had money to finance this...
...Yet many of the houses classed as acceptable lack facilities the average city family would regard necessary, things like electric lighting and running water...
...More Winter cover crops are also used and cotton varieties have been improved...
...For during the depression it was not possible for farmers to maintain their houses and other buildings in the best shape or to purchase full modern equipment...
...If war needs continue great for long our effective food needs could be increased one-third in two years, with requisite changes in the pattern of production to provide a highly nutritious if not extremely palatable diet...
...A million and a half farm families need better housing and lack funds to finance it...
...That is what can be done...
...This land has gone into the production of commodities for sale...
...Yet millions of pounds of butter were then being held in cold storage in excess of holdings in previous years...
...If so, then possibly 2 million farmers, fully equipped, could supply the market...
...But the mechanization of farms is responsible for much of the steady rise in the efficiency of farm labor...
...We can also breed as many such cows as we need to give our entire population all the milk and dairy products nutrition scientists say they require...
...What happens then depends largely upon whether we decide to give our entire American family here in the United States jobs and a full diet...
...Southern cotton acreage has decreased and more peanuts, soybeans, sweetpotatoes, and livestock are grown instead...
...This would indicate that a remarkable increase in output can be achieved by technological means alone...
...There is no such thing under wartime conditions as "overproduction" and "underconsumption...
...The average number employed on farms fell about 400,000 between 1929 and 1938...
...What's the answer...
...There was a contribution of $12 billions, which was augmented by three or four more billion dollars transferred from farms to cities as adults grown from former farm children became heirs of farm property on the death of their parents...
...Farmers can readily increase their production of food and fiber after the war by as much as 15 per cent in 5 years within our customary farm-production pattern but they need incentive to do so...
...Those who lacked cash to buy were not considered at all...
...Furthermore an unusually large proportion of the farm work had to be done in 1944 by the very young, the very old, women, and inexperienced urban workers...
...Yet, as an immortal said, a potato is merely about the best substitute for food ever invented...
...Yet, right during the war, we have learned to produce more efficiently in our farm factory than ever before...
...Another outstanding increase has been the average gain of one-third in the number of eggs laid per hen between 1909 and 1943...
...For a cow producing 9,000 pounds a year, twice the average production of that day, ate but 40 per cent more feed...
...one-third more even than in 1939...
...The number of combine harvesters on farms increased 22 per cent and of corn-pickers 30 per cent between January 1, 1942, and January 1, 1945...
...Farm, City Prosperity One But farmers will have no incentive to produce more if all it means for them is an increase in rural slums, a lower living standard, and technological unemployment...
...That is too much to ask again...
...Cotton yields per acre have averaged one-half higher in recent years then they did before the drought...
...Finally, improved farm practices can be used further to increase crop yields and output per head of livestock...
...Machines Replacing Manpower Yet farmers in 1944 achieved their eighth record year of production in a row...
...But dairy cows can be bred to produce 25,000 to 32,000 pounds, and more per year...
...But also, by 1929, farmers who were producing a market value of commodities in excess of $1,000 a year were also turning out 89 per cent of all farm products being sold or traded...
...In the postwar future we can choose between prosperous city industry and a high level of employment, with complete fulfillment of basic needs for all, or urban depression and rural misery...
...It was then estimated that completely efficient use of mechanization would have produced the entire farm output with 1,600.000 fewer workers than in 1929...
...The development of hybrid corn accounts for much of the increased corn yield, up an average of 20 per cent over yields of open-pollinated varieties under identical conditions...
...5 million acres above 1044, or G million above 1935-39, with higher yields still per acre...
...Roughage production can be increased 25 to 30 per cent by use of recently developed better-yielding varieties of alfalfa, lespedeza, kudzu, Ladino clover, and improved grasses...
...Mechanization is replacing lost manpower wherever possible...
...They produced food at a rate of 30 per cent above the 1935-39 level...
...We read of mechanical cotton pickers which make a saving of $24.82 per bale over hand-pickers—a fine thing when labor is down 40 to 60 per cent, but possibly destined to depopulate large areas after the war...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 18
