28 ANNUAL EEPOET& OF DEPARTMENT OF AGEICULTURE. 



furnish full and economical employment to the farm family and to 

 the work animals throughout the year. The minimum practical farm 

 unit appears to be a farm of such size as will give adequate continuous 

 occupation to the family. The unit for efficiency is somewhat larger 

 than this. It has been found in one of our leading dairy sections that 

 on farms of less than 100 acres the number of days' work for each in- 

 dividual employed is less than the full working capacity. In that 

 locality a farm of this size gives full employment to two regular men, 

 in addition to the extra help required at harvest time. Not only 

 does the large farm utilize labor to better advantage, but it re- 

 quires fewer animals to work a given area and is better supplied 

 with labor-saving machinery. Farmers quite generally are begin- 

 ning to recognize the fact that production is cheaper on large farms 

 than on small ones and that the profits are greater for each unit 

 of labor. There are thus forces at work to increase the magnitude of 

 the farm business and statistics show that the agriculture of the 

 country slowly is responding. Still, in the vicinity of large cities there 

 is a tendency toward intensive farming, and on the Atlantic seaboard 

 the acreage of improved land in the farm decreased from 69 acres 

 in 1850 to 56 acres in 1910. In the cotton belt there has been a 

 decrease since 1860 from 125 to 37 acres. This is due mainly to 

 the breaking up of the large plantations. In the North Central States 

 the proportion of land that can be devoted to intensive farming 

 is relativelv small, and in that section there has been an increase in 

 the acreage of improved farms from 61 acres in 1850 to 113 in 1910. 

 As stated in the last annual report, there is much land in this 

 country to be brought under cultivation; but this land in general 

 is more difficult of access or more difficult to bring into use than 

 that which is now cultivated. Future increase in production must 

 come largely through better management of the land in cultivation. 

 In a number of sections, however, there could be an extension of 

 the land in use without much difficulty. This would result in greater 

 economy and efficiency in- the use of the labor of men and work 

 animals. The Office of Farm Management has made a careful sur- 

 vey of a part of the Piedmont section of South Carolina. It finds 

 that the size of the average farm there is 76 acres, while the area 

 of land under cultivation in the farm is only 34 acres. It discovers 

 that there are in this section 215 available work days and that, partly 

 because of the small size of the farm and partly because of the too 



