THE FARMER’S LOT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 March 1940, Page 11

THE FARMER’S LOT

PROBLEMS IN UNITED STATES SOME MODERN TRENDS. LIMITS ON SPECIALISATION. A sound farming situation, writes Haydn S. Pearson in the "Christian Science Monitor." is essential for American welfare. Since 1929 many panaceas have been proposed. Theorists and experts have had their day. Politicians have promised the impossible and still surpluses have piled up. Planting quotas and government subsidies have been tried They are not the answer. Tampering with basic laws—laws that have evolved from the human experience of social living through the centuries —is only a stopgap emergency procedure.

Meanwhile, in the last five years, a gigantic, unheralded, but vital’ change has been wrought in the thinking of thousands of farmers. The movement, noticeable all over the United States, is most pronounced in the East and South-east. It has three main currents.

First, farm families are realising that the farm ought to produce food for The families and the livestock. 'I here are, and will continue to be. locations where intense specialisation will be good farming practice. But thinking in national terms, a farm ought to provide foodstuffs for those who live on it. For the past thirty years or more there have been wide areas where this was not done. "Run, your farm as a business" was the misleading motto promulgated for agriculture. Farming is more than a business. It is a combination of home, business, and a way of living. It is a Highly personal and subjective situation. As contrasted with the one-basket idea, and a pile of empty, rusting tin cans at the back door, farm families have learned by the harsh lesson of economics that another mode of life offers more security and happiness. The first tenet is home production of foods. Second, farm families have learned that economic well-being in agriculture depends on several lines of income. There is increasing interest in raising beef as well as producing milk; milk farmers are beginning to sell cream, the skim milk going to calves, pigs, and hens. In the South, gardens and cows are appearing on the plantation. Through the Middle West and spreading eastward are freezing plants where farmers may store home-grown meats, fruits, and vegetables for future use.

One of the differences that has made it difficult for city people and rural people to meet on common ground is the fact that farming entails certain conditions over which the operator lias little control. The two major economic factors in agriculture are weather and markets. Eolh are being met to a certain extent, but the fact remains ihal agriculture cannot control its conditions as completely as does the average factory or store.

To overcome these two conditions, principally marketing uncertainly, the average farm is diversifying its products. The north-eastern section of the United Slates has been noted for its diversification, but other wide sections of the nation’s farming area have been too much a one-crop proposition. Third, as economic stress forces farmers to raise their food and to plan other lines of income, the national problem of soil conservation will be controlled. Marginal and sub-marginal land will be returned to grass and forests; over-grazing will be lessened as farmers learn that it is economically unsound. Soil will be recognised as a piecious national asset. Thinking in long terms of history, it is only within recent years that the fear of hunger has been allayed. Research has taught us how to produce more food than the farmers can sell profitably. It is a sad commentary on our ability to distribute material things that there are many who need the farm products, and who cannot have them because of the cost added by distributive agencies.

The farm ‘'problem" is solving .itself. It will take time, but there are many encouraging signs. Approximately onefourth of the total population lives in the rural sections of America. Thenprosperity is essential to keep the wheels of industry turning. As the basic laws of agriculture are conformed to, we shall have the solution to many of today’s farm problems. Experience sl-.ows that acting in accordance with settled rules of action, the fruits of experience, is the fundamental factor in rooting out all difficulties.