Changes in American Farming

Excerpts from the report: This study was undertaken in the belief that a first requisite for intelligent action on our peacetime production problems is an understanding of the nature and strength of the forces that have shaped the course of agricultural production in recent years. These forces will continue to influence production in the years to come. But new forces will be injected. Some of these are already on the horizon—the mechanical cotton picker is an example. Others cannot be foreseen. But constant change must be expected; and agriculture must adapt itself to changes that are inevitable and, for the most part, desirable. The revolutionary changes in farm production since World War I are not reversible. Policies developed for the present and for the prospective production situation, therefore, should reflect recent developments and those that can now be foreseen. They cannot be fashioned from the pattern that prevailed before the age of mechanical power and before other fundamental changes had taken place. The background data used for this analysis are largely the statistics contained in the crop and livestock reports and other production releases of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics.