83 



The Consumption of Wood on Farms 

 The three outstanding uses of wood on farms in IlHnois are for 

 lumber, fence posts, and fuel. The consumption of lumber is estimated 

 to average 1,250 board feet per farm, or a total of 296,476,250 board 

 feet per year on the 237,181 farms. These, and other data on use and 

 production of wood on farms are based partly on the results of a ques- 

 tionnaire sent to 1,600 farmers through cooperation with the Office of 

 Farm Organization and Management and the State Leader of Farm 

 Advisers. Each county agent was asked to supply the names of repre- 

 sentative farmers in his county who owned woodland. Another list of 

 names of farmers having over 40 acres of woodland was secured through 

 the assistance of Mr. A. j. Surratt, Agricultural Statistician at Spring- 

 field. The Natural History Survey takes this occasion to thank the 440 

 farmers who aided the investigation by furnishing data. 



THE CONSUMPTION OF FENCE POSTS IN ILLINOIS 



The average farm in Illinois contained 134.8 acres in 1920. The 

 amount of fencing which is required for all farms in the state was de- 

 rived in two ways. In Bulletin 321 of the U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture on the subject "Cost of Fencing Farms in the North Central 

 States", Humphrey ('16) gives the number of rods of fence per acre 

 for farms of different sizes. Those between 100 and 140 acres require 

 6.3 rods per acre. The second method was the questionnaire, answers 

 to which covered 121,434 acres. On this area of 1S9.74 sections there 

 was required 10 miles and 140 rods of fence per section, or 5.21S5 rods 

 per acre. 



The area of the average farm for which these data were taken was 

 354 acres. It was assumed that the average of all fences would re- 

 quire 1 post per rod of fence. The ratio of rods of fence per acre in- 

 creases as the farm-unit diminishes in area, hence a factor of increase 

 of 20 per cent was applied to these figures, which gave a requirement of 

 6.26 posts per acre for average Illinois farms of 134.8 acres as against 

 6.3 posts based on Bulletin 321 (in 1916) for farms of 100 to 1 10 acres. 



The average farm, then, requires 843.8 fence posts in good repair. 

 With 31,974,775 acres of farm land in 237,181 farms, the total number 

 of fence posts in place is 200,163,000 in 625,506 miles of fence, equivalent 

 to 25 times the earth's circumference. 



As the area of land in farms is not increasing but, rather, diminish- 

 ing, any tendency to increase the amount of fencing on the average farm 



