AUTOMATION ON THE FARM

AT state and county fairs years ago, the crowning events for U.S. farmers were such contests as corn picking and husking and a tug of war between horses. A fast-working champion could harvest corn at the rate of 100 bu. a day. But today's farmer has little interest in such events; with a mechanical corn picker, he thinks nothing of picking and husking 1,500 bu of corn a day. For machine-age farmers a big event at fairs is the tractor rodeo," in which farmers compete at starting tractors attaching implements, plowing the straightest, fastest furrows. Merely hitching up a plow was once a backbreaking task-the heavy implement had to be lifted by several men, worried into position bolted into place. But on 1955's tractors hydraulic lifts make it a simple, one-man job.

The tractor rodeos are symptomatic of a vast and sweeping change in U.S. agriculture. Like U.S. businessmen, the nation's farmers have turned to automation. Typical of the great change are the Bidart brothers, John, 41, and Frank, 49, who started out in 1932 with 300 acres near Bakersfield, Calif., a borrowed tractor and four mules. Now they farm 5,600 acres of prime cotton land by machine. They have a cotton gin, 14 cotton pickers (costing $11,000 apiece), 24 tractors and eight trucks all equipped with two-way radios. Says John Bidart who also owns half-interest in a $7,000 plane used to spray the cotton: We couldn't get along without our radio communication We couldn't replace the radio with six good men."

As a result of the marching mechanization, the U.S. farm-machinery industry is heading for the greatest boom in its history. After a three-year slump, farm machinery sales last week were 15% higher than in 1954. Every firm--Oliver, International Harvester, Allis-Chalmers, Massey-Harris-Ferguson--has dozens of machines on the market to do almost every job under the farmer's sun (see color pages). John Deere alone has machines to do 100 specific jobs and variations on each that run into the thousands. And throughout the industry, engineers are busy devising dozens of still newer machines, not only to make the U.S. farmer's job easier, but more efficient and profitable.

Seventeen from One. Automation on the farm is not a new idea. The big push came in the last 15 years, mothered by wartime necessity when the demands for food were huge and the shortage of manpower crippling. In the 1850s about 80% of the U.S. population lived on farms; today, the figure is only 13.5%.

Some 2,000,000 U.S. farmers have migrated away from the land since 1946 alone. As a result, U.S. farmers have been forced to turn to machines with which one man can do the job of a dozen and do it faster and better.

Once farmers pooled their money to buy a tractor or a combine, shared it from farm to farm. Now every farmer wants his own. Any new development catches on with prairiefire speed. In California's Kern County, for example, cotton now accounts for 40% of the county's $224 million annual income from agriculture, largely because of mechanical cotton pickers. Says one equipment dealer: "In 1946, we sold six cotton pickers For the next eight years we never sold less than 100 machines, and in 1951 our sales-went over 200." Today, there are about 1,500 cotton pickers in Kern County harvesting cotton at an average $10 to $20 per bale v. $50 to do the job by hand.

The story is the same in all farm counties. Since 1940 the number of tractors on U.S. farms has tripled to 4,500000. Combines jumped 400%, to 950,000; corn pickers 500% to 640,000; forage harvesters 100% to 170,000; hay balers 100% to 393,000. For expanding dairy farmers, milking machines shot up from 212,000 to close to 800,000. All told, U.S. farmers, who had $3.2 billion invested in machines in 1940, have poured $18.7 billion into their barnyard automation, are adding millions more each month. As a result, each farmer grows enough to feed himself and 17 others v. ten others 20 years ago.

The new machines have not only worked a change in farming methods but also in the entire U.S. farm economy. Since 1920, the number of U.S. farms has dropped from 6,500000 to 5,200,000, while the size of each has risen from 148 acres to an average of 215. The small farmer is dying out; the big farmer, with enough rolling, clanking machines to equip a tank platoon, has taken over his land, and farms it more efficiently In Iowa's Shelby County (587 sq. mi.) 138 farmhouses stand abandoned in the midst of fertile, machine-tilled fields.

In some states the increasing trend is to farm corporations which take over the job of dozens of small farmers. But largely U.S. farming is still a family operation run by a farmer who has learned to buy machines and make them pay. With bigger crops from his machines and a good income, he can afford to pay high land prices to buy more acres, make more money, and thus buy still more land. Ten years ago Willard Wedberg of Fremont Neb. had two hired hands to help work 320 acres of corn land! Last year, with bigger and better cultivators and tractors he farmed 520 acres with only one part-time helper.

Pasture to the Cattle. The new machines come high. Says Frank Simpson, who works 600 acres in central Illinois: "It used to be that to make hay, you went out with a 75-c- pitchfork a $30 hayrack and a $300 team. Now, to make hay, you go out with a $450 mower, a $385 side-delivery rake, a $2,000 baler three wagons to go behind the baler at $500 apiece, a $200 electric motor to run a $500 dump for the baler, and a $3,000 tractor to pull the wagons. Of course, the difference is that we used to make poor-quality hay and now we make good-quality hay, and production goes up." Despite the cost, machines have made harvesting hay so simple that thousands of farmers have gone into grass farming as a primary crop. Choppers cut up hay in the field, blow it into wagons, and it is blown later from the wagons into the barn. For farmers who like hay in bales, there are automatic tie-balers that do the work of six men, automatic lifts with which one man can store away 600 bales a day. Says one Nebraska cattleman: "We're bringing the pasture to the.

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