Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/469

Rh important problem before him at the present time is the question of reorganizing his farming methods so as to best fit the agricultural conditions as they now exist.

The unprecedented increase of values of farm products in recent years resulting in a greatly increased cost of living to every one has resulted in the most prosperous times the American farmer has ever experienced, except during the civil war by those who stayed at home and reaped the benefits of high prices.

The consumer, on the other hand, is alarmed at the continued rise in price of the necessities of life. He is interested in knowing what the end is going to be and how much longer prices are going to rise.

Writers who are ill-advised of the potential producing power of American farms are freely predicting that we are rapidly approaching the time when as a nation we shall not be able to produce sufficient food stuffs for our own population. They forget that our farms are not producing more than one half of what they are capable of doing. Our average wheat yield is 14 bushels per acre; our average yield of corn is 26 bushels, and of oats, 25 bushels; these yields can and will be redoubled in the future as the high price of the products will demand.

The profits of farming in the past gained from actual production has not been in proportion to the profits derived from other industries. The market price of farm products has tended toward the actual cost of production of the average crop at current wages rather than the cost of production of the part of the crop produced under the most unfavorable conditions. This is readily demonstrated by taking the actual amount of time required to grow and harvest an acre of any of the principal crops and calculating the time at current wages and the average yields at farm prices.

The results will show that the returns received for the time spent will not be more than enough to pay current wages and six per cent, interest on the investment in land and equipment. Farmers have received greater returns from the increased value of their lands than they have from the profits upon their productions.

The increased prices of farm products are beginning to bring to farmers a just return for labor expended and will do more than anything else to turn the city dweller "back to the soil" and to keep the country boy on the farm. There is no danger of a shortage of food supplies in this country, but higher prices must prevail in order to develop the potential agricultural resources of the country. Aside from the possibilities of doubling the present crop production on present area under production, there remains the undeveloped agricultural lands of the country. Aside from the limited amount of land suitable for agricultural purposes still remaining in the ownership of the government, the lands that may become valuable for agricultural purposes are of