WASTE IN FARMING.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 787, 24 November 1922, Page 9

WASTE IN FARMING.

HENRY FORD’S VIEWS, “The farmer makes too comp,ex an affair out of his daily work". I believe that, the average farmer puts to a really useful purpose only about 5 per cent, of the energy chut he spends. If anyone ever equipped a factory in the style, say, the average farm is fitted out, the place would be cluttered with; men,” writes Mr Ford in the first of a special series of arTeles in November '•‘Life..,” “The worst factory in Europe is hardlv as bad as .the average i‘a.rmbarn/’ says Mr Ford., ‘ Power is utilised to the least possible degree. Not only is everything done by hand, but seldom is a thought given to logical arrangements. A farmer doing his chores will wa(k up and down a rickety ladder for years instead of putting in a few lengths of pipe. Tlis whole idea when there is extra vvor]< to do, is to hr.'e extra men. He thinks of putting money into improvements as an expense. Farm products at their lowest prices age dearer than they ougn. to be. It is waste motion—waste effort--that makes farm prices high and profits low. "On my own farm at Dearborn we do evdrything by machinery. We have eliminated a great number of wastes, but we have not as yet touched on real economy, We have not yet been able to put in five or ten years qf intense night-and-day study to discover what really ought to be done- We have ieft more undone than we lyive done. Yet at no time—no mattejr what the value of crops—have we fat led to turn a firstclass profit. We are not farmers —we are industrialists on the farm. The moment the farmer considers himself as an industrialist,, with a horroij of waste, either in material or in men, then we are going to have farm products so low-priced that all will be considered as among the least hazardous and most profitable of occupations. “Lack of knowledge of what if. going on, andl lack o>f knowledge of what the job rqaily is, and ithe best way of doing it, arc the reasons why farming is thought not to pay, Nothing- could pay '.he way farming is conducted. The farmer follbws luck and his (forefather. He does not know how economically to produce, and he does not know how to market. A manufacturer who knew how neither to produce nor to rnaite would not long stay in business. That the farmer can stay on shows how wonderfully profitable farming tyut be.”