Land Planning Report 



living under the type of fanning or cropping system to 

 wliicli tlie land is best suited. 



In nearly all areas an increase in the size of farms 

 would result in a decrease in the number of farms and 

 therefore in displacement of some farm families. Esti- 

 mates made in connection with this study place the 

 number of families which would need to be relocated as 

 a result of desirable enlargement of farm units at about 



80,nnn. 



Two general kinds of situation call for larger farms: 



(1) ^^^lere the type of farming and cropping systems 

 are adapted to the land, but the unit does not con- 

 tain enough acres to return the operator a fair living. 

 (A variation of this situation is found in certain irrigated 

 sections of the West, in which the water supply is 

 insufficient to provide a fair living for each unit. Here 

 larger farms may signify primarily more water per unit, 

 although increase in both land and water may be 

 involved.) 



(2) Where the type of farming, or the cropping sys- 

 tem needs to be made less intensive in the interest of 

 soil conservation, or otherwise in the interest of better 

 adaption to the character of the land, thereby requiring 

 a larger acreage, to provide an equivalent return. This 

 change in the type of farming or cropping system would 

 consist of (a) the use of grass or legumes for longer 

 periods in the rotation, (b) the replacement of parts of 

 the crop land by permanent pasture, or (c) increasing 

 the proportion of forage crops on land where grain 

 yields are too low and unreliable to provide reasonably 

 adequate living. (A variation of this situation is found 

 in certain irrigated sections in which the water supply is 

 inadequate, or is being progressively depleted, and in 

 which fewer, and therefore larger units, accompanied 

 by an increase in the proportion of less intensive uses, is 

 needed.) 



A general increase in the size of farms in many agri- 

 cultural areas would doubtless result in more efficient 

 operation and larger returns per farm. The displace- 

 ment of many farmers, however, to permit already pro- 

 ductive farms to yield a higher return is difficult to 

 defend under present conditions. The recommenda- 

 tion that farms be made larger is therefore limited to 

 those cases in which the small size of unit leads to des- 

 titution because of the small volume of business, or 

 contributed to soil depletion because family support 

 requires too heavy cropping. 



Increasing the size of farms usually involves the 

 annexation or consolidation of adjoining operating 

 units. The redundancy of fai'm families created by 

 this process must find land or a means of subsistence 

 elsewhere. Obviously the availability of better oppor- 

 tunities elsewhei'e will influence the rate at which this 

 adjustment can be made. 



Although adjustments in size of farms have occurred 

 and will probably continue to occur through mdividual 

 action alone, a general movement toward larger farms 

 in many areas cannot be effected easily by such indi- 

 vidual action. To the extent that this difficulty pre- 

 vails, the acquisition of adjoining operating units 

 to bring about farms of most desirable size in an 

 orderly manner requires collective or cooperative action. 



The problem of undesirably small farms is distinctly 

 regional in importance. There are doutbless a. few 

 uneconomically small farms in every area, but the 

 problem is much more pronounced in certain regions. 

 On the whole, farms tend to be too small in the rela- 

 tively less-productive areas; that is, in areas where 

 more acres are required to return a hving imder a con- 

 servative cropping system. Important areas where 

 this adjustment is recommended are the western 

 Great Plains, the erosive areas of the western and 

 southern Corn Belt, the general fanning areas of the 

 Ohio Valley and southern Illinois, certain erosive parts 

 of the Cotton Belt, and numerous irrigated areas of the 

 West. 



In the Great Plains, one encounters increasingly dry 

 country, with increasingly low and irregular yields of 

 dry-farmed crops as one travels westward. To com- 

 pensate for this lower productivity per acre, more 

 acres per unit are required to provide an equivalent 

 living. Farms therefore average larger in the western 

 than in the eastern and more humid portion of the Great 

 Plams. The difl'erence, however, in many cases is not 

 as great as is warranted by the greater aridity of the 

 western portion. Failure properly to modify the home- 

 stead laws so that the size of homestead unit was in 

 accordance with the productivity of the country, 

 resulted in 160- and 320-acre farms being preempted 

 in areas where at least R40 acres were needed to support 

 a family. The low and unreliable rainfall dictates, in 

 many places, the use of summer fallowing to conserve 

 moisture, thus increasing greatly the requirement for 

 land per operation unit. The marked unreliability of 

 wheat yields due to an erratic chmate suggest the need 

 of combining a range-livestock enterprise with grain 

 growmg to help tide operators o\er jioor gram years. 

 To accommodate the addition of a range-livestock 

 enterprise to a farm, a larger acreage will generally be 

 needed. Attempts at grain farming on acreages that 

 are too small have resulted in outright abandonment of 

 farms after every extended period of low rainfall. 



Soil and erosion specialists have found soil erosion 

 and soil depletion to be a serious problem as a residt of 

 overcropping in the loess hills of central Nebraska, on 

 the dissected plains of southern Nebraska and northern 

 Kansas, and in the hilly areas of southern Iowa, 

 northern Missoini, and western Illinois. A continua- 



