This monograph was prepared by Dr. Walter J. Quick, Special Agent of the Federal Board for Vocational Education, under direction of Charles H. Winslow, Chief of the Research Division of the Federal Board. Acknowledgment is due to E. H. Thomson, Acting Chief, and Dr. E. V. Wilcox, Agriculturist of the Office of Farm Management, United States Department of Agriculture, for suggestions and data, also to Dr. John Cummings, of the Research Division, for editorial assistance.
General farming is not intensive, but is diversified farming. It is the production of crops of a relatively nonperishable nature which have a wide market, and of the production of live stock and live stock products, in addition, with considerable attention to the production on the farm of food and food supplies for the farm household.
More Farmers Needed
Agriculture as developed in the United States gives employment directly to nearly 15,000,000 persons, who with their families more or less engaged in agricultural work make up a total agricultural population of from fifty to sixty million. But more farmers and better farming are urgently needed now.
Even before the outbreak of the war agricultural production had not kept pace with the increase of our population, and immediately after war was declared men on American farms responded to the call for man power to operate mines, build ships, make ammunition, and carry on the many other urgent war industries. Then the dire need for farm labor manifested itself, and the demand for wheat, corn, meats, sugar, fruits, cotton, and numerous other agricultural products increased. This demand will not diminish, now that the war is over. On the contrary, the world is looking to the agricultural production of the United States to alleviate the suffering which exists in the devastated countries of Europe liberated from war without adequate means of immediately resuming agricultural operations.
Our army of agriculturists must be recruited to its full strength, and your enlistment in this army will help to make possible operation of American farms to their full capacity.
Recent statistics show a total of over 800,000,000 acres in farms, of which nearly half are classed as unimproved. A large area is prairie land already clear. But you would be especially interested in the improved farms, located, as many of them are, in the vicinity of your former home, where an interest would be felt in you and encouragement given you on every hand. A large proportion of our farm acreage is unimproved and is not employed even as pasture land. It is a deplorable fact that so many farms are idle or only running partly farmed. But that fact is your opportunity. The Federal Board for Vocational Education will train you for any agricultural line of work you may elect, and farmers, in every State, handicapped by insufficient labor on account of the war, are anxious to render assistance in making you efficient. Your training course may be advantageously finished on the farm, or in the garden or orchard, and may be mutually advantageous to you and to the owner.
There are three factors which should largely influence the choice of your vocational line of training—first, former employment and experience; second, your own desire; and third, the degree of your disability. If your former occupation was in any way connected with agriculture, and you desire to return to it, the third factor, disability, unless very serious, hardly needs consideration.
Even if you were not engaged in agricultural pursuits before the war, you may well ask yourself if it is not wise now to take advantage of this opportunity to enter upon a healthful rural life? The labor is wholesome and will strengthen you physically, constantly decreasing your handicap.
You may not have had the opportunity before, but it is now yours to realize the dream of a contented, independent life in God’s big out-of-doors.