FARM AND DAIRY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 121, 9 October 1912, Page 5

FARM AND DAIRY.

THE FARMER OF THE FUTURE. The Pacific Rural Press says:— "The future of agriculture in the United Mates depends very largely upon the brains and energy of its farming population. This means that the farmer of the future must be a business man, and he must conduct his farm upon a busi-ness-like basis—therefore, first of all that he must know his business. He must know how to care for his soil, how to replenish it, how to protect it from erosion or washes, and how to cultivate it. He must be keenly alive to the necessity of good seed. He must be mechanical enough to utilise every possible labor-saving machine and implement in order to take the place of the hired help which appears to be growing scarcer all the time.

"He must be broad-minded enough to know that good roads will bring him tenfold for all that he ever invests in them in the saving of time and. in wear-and-tear on his stocks and vehicles.

"He must be enlightened enough to know that it is good sense and good economy to have a comfortable home. Thousands of farmers are paying annual doctors' bills sufficient to establish their families in comfort.

"A woman carrying water 100 yards from a pump, and wood 200 feet from the kitchen, travels a good many miles in a year. A girl who speids eight or ten hours per week pumping water, turning a churn or separator, etc., can occupy her time not only to better advantage to herself, but to greater actual profit. "The farmer who loses one or two of his boys just at the time he needs them most, because they would rather wear good clothes in the town or city and ear* wages, than to saw. wood, husk corn, and do the other heavy, rough work om the farm, nine times out of ten has only himself to blame.

"It is natural for boys and girls to remain in their original surrouudings, and they leave them' only because of superior attractions elsewhere. These attractions generally mean a pleasanter and more congenial manner of earning a living. "Agriculture of the future must make the farm the most attractive place for the boys and the girls as well as for the father and mother. This is not only good sense, but good business. It pays in money. ,

"The best farmer is not necessarily th» man who works the hardest with his brains. He is the man who has brains, who is willing to learn every day, who profits by the experience of his neighbors, who keeps in touch with the world and esteems education for its full worth.

' "Such will be the farmers of the future, and they will make farming a, dignified, pleasant and profitable occupation. Their sons and daughters will stay on the farm, because no other place can offer more attractions.

"The automobile, the telephone, electric lights, labor-saving machinery, comfortable heating, running water, and all the modern living conveniences will strip the towns and cities of much of their glamor, and frequent trips into the outside world will only make the farm home more pleasant by contrast.