20 CIKCULAE NO. 117, BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY. 



institute (54 per cent) in actually inducing the farmer to action. In 

 Georgia, out of 634 farmers visited, 30 had received personal instruc- 

 tion from demonstration agents, 22 of whom, or 73 per cent, put the 

 instructions into practice. 



The county agricultural demonstration agent is too recent an 

 appearance in the field of agriculture to draw any definite conclu- 

 sions from such a survey as this as to his efficiency in influencing 

 farm practice. 



Furthermore, there is often a hesitancy on the part of the farmer, 

 and especially on the part of farm managers, to admit having re- 

 ceived help from any source other than experience. If outside help 

 is admitted, a manager is usually more willing to give the credit to 

 farm papers or bulletins than to a demonstration agent. This is 

 perhaps especially true and has particular application in the South, 

 where many of the plantations are conducted by hired managers. In 

 this survey 23 out of the 1,001 farmers visited in the South were 

 negro farmers. On the larger plantations where there were several 

 tenants, all working under the same general system, only the land- 

 lord was visited in this survey. The comparatively few men encoun- 

 tered, however, in the counties passed through where agricultural 

 agents are employed who were willing to acknowledge having re- 

 ceived aid from this source would seem to indicate that the locating 

 of an agent in a county having from 2,500 to 3,000 farmers with the 

 expectation that the agent will personally come in contact with any 

 large number of farmers on their own farms will probably have to 

 be modified. To visit four or five farmers on their own farms in one 

 day and become sufficiently well informed of their needs to permit 

 offering suggestions as to the conduct of the farm is a larger day's 

 work than the average agent will accomplish. Yet even at this rate 

 it would take the agent from two to three years to pay all the farm- 

 ers of the county a single visit. When it is remembered that sub- 

 stantial advance .in agriculture, like advancement in any other busi- 

 ness, is a matter primarily of intellectual growth, it is se«n that too 

 great expectation must not be made of immediate results from the 

 county agent. 



INFLUENCE OF BOOKS AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES. 



Out of the 3,G98 farmers visited, only 155, or about 1 in 24, pos- 

 sessed a library of farm books. Seldom were they libraries in any 

 extended sense of that word, as the number of books in the possession 

 of a single individual rarely exceeded a half dozen and usually con- 

 sisted of but two or three. In some instances the statement was made 

 that the books were not read. By agricultural books in this survey is 

 meant books relating to farm matters not published by State or 



[Cir. 117] 



