THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 



cultural colleges are beginning to estab- 

 lish demonstration farms to teach the 

 people in the localities. Every public in- 

 stitution that owns a farm should contrib- 

 ute to this movement. There are prison 

 farms, asylum farms, almshouse farms, 

 and other land properties, comprising 

 many thousands of acres and located in all 

 parts of the states, that might be local 

 teaching agents. It is not enough that 

 public farms of this kind be merely well 

 farmed (some of them do not even meet 

 this requirement) ; they should all be 

 demonstration areas, at least in part, to 

 exhibit and explain to the communities the 

 newer and better facts of agriculture. They 

 should have some kind of relation with a 

 supervising educational institution, and 

 their work should be broadly organized on 

 an educational basis. 



We need to go still farther than this. 

 There are thousands of good acres of land 

 in the states, located directly in the centers 

 of the best communities, that are used only 

 one week each year and even then perhaps 

 with little effect on the betterment of coun- 

 30 



