Proceedings of Seventeenth Normal Institute 157 



I desire to emphasize here the importance in the extension 

 plan which the Department attaches to the study and distribution 

 of good local practices — the carrying from farmer to farmer of 

 the best things the community itself has worked out. It is not 

 generally appreciated, I think, that in the North practically every 

 community has worked out successful practices and systems of 

 farming, which, if more generally observed by farmers, would 

 result in a greatly improved agriculture in the community. This 

 fact is unusually M^ell brought out in the farm management dem- 

 onstrations made during the year with 140 groups of 70 farmers 

 each. These demonstrations were made in 140 counties, and in 

 cooperation with 140 county agents distributed from Maine to 

 Oregon. They show that in practically every community of 

 farmers surveyed, approximately 20 per cent of the farmers were 

 paying interest on their investment and making $1,000 a year 

 labor income more than the average of all the farms in the com- 

 munity. Also, in those same communities there were more than 

 20 per cent of the farmers, if allowed interest on their invest- 

 ment, that were not getting a single dollar for the entire year's 

 work, and must largely live off their interest money if they have 

 any income at all. So general have these demonstrations been in 

 accord on this point, and so rare the exceptions — not one to my 

 knowledge — that I am inclined to think that this is a fairly 

 general truth throughout the greater part of the northern and 

 western states — that practically every . community has worked 

 out successful methods and systems of farming, which, if generally 

 practiced in the community, would make the community unusually 

 prosperous. 



Whether this is a general truth or not, it emphasizes this point : 

 that in making a special effort to learn and spread local practices 

 which -have been proved effective, farm bureaus are starting out 

 on a most logical and promising plan. It is a sound plan be- 

 cause the practices thus spread are the ones that are proving 

 financially successful. It is convincing extension work because 

 the data are local. Now the impartial, disinterested, analytical 

 county agent, the employee of the farm bureau, is the best means 

 yet suggested of recognizing these unusually successful farmers 

 in each community, and of bringing to all the farmers of the 



