of the state in respect to subject matter selected. The be- 

 .iude through a study of soils in relationship to field 



Practically all farming requires a knowledge of soils and 

 field crops. Since the various types of farming have much in com- 

 mon in theory and practice, it is customary to approach this com- 

 mon subject matter through a study of the prevailing type of agri- 

 culture. 



Age of Farmers. It is interesting to note that the farmers who 

 operate the more successful farms I classified as "good" and "fair") 

 are not youthful as a class. Figure 3 shows that half of them are 

 between 44 and 33 years of age. This, in connection with facts 

 ^ater presented in Table 21 bear out the wide spread belief that 

 agriculture is one of the broadest of vocations due to the large num- 

 ber of elements it has in common with life. The latter table shows 

 that the older farmers do about twice as many kinds of repair and 

 construction work as the younger farmers. This is no doubt due 

 in part to the fact that certain pieces of work, such as repairing or 

 building a hog house, or a watering trough, is performed only oc- 

 nally. and so two or even five years of farm experience will 

 not give opportunity to do all kinds of work incidental to farming. 



It may be argued that the younger farmers hire more of their 



