4 Yearhook of the Department of Agriculture^ 1921. 



for January 1, 1920. American farms, in general, are different 

 fi-om those in other countries of the world, except Canada, Aus- 

 tralia, and South Africa. English farms differ from American 

 farms in that they are nearly all operated by tenants and employ 

 more hand labor. The peasant farms of continental Europe utilize 

 agricultural machinery still less and are much smaller in size than 

 most American farms. The farms of India, China, and Japan are 

 still smaller and are cultivated with only the crudest tools. There 

 are 28 to 30 acres of crops per person employed in agriculture in 

 the Ignited States, as compared with 9 in Russia prior to the war, 7 

 in France and Germany, and 1^ in Japan. (See Figs. 97 to 124.) 



The American farm involves a large investment of capital. This 

 investment is increasing and must increase if the American farmer is 

 to improve his standard of living. The average value of farms in the 

 United States was $6,444 in 1910, and $12,084 in 1920. In Iowa, the 

 average value of the farms in 1920 was $39,941. The area of the 

 crops per farm in the United States increased from 50 acres in 1909 

 to 57 acres in 1919. Our farmers are driving larger teams, using 

 more efficient machinery, producing more per acre and per person 

 than ever before. Each American farmer and farm laborer, on the 

 average, is feeding nine people other than himself in this country, 

 and one more person living in foreign lands. It is in this increasing 

 productivity of the American farm, amounting probably to 15 

 per cent in the last decade, that the expenditure for scientific re- 

 search, for technical education, and for imi)roved economic organiza- 

 tion in agriculture finds its justification. 



This semicapitalistic American farm, however, is not organized like 

 a factory. The one farm laborer per farm, on the average, is often 

 the farmer's son, or a neighbor's, who eats at the same table with the 

 farmer and expects some time to have a farm of his own. Corporate 

 or commimal agriculture is, in general, a failure in the United States. 

 The family farm is practically the universal type. To keep this 

 American farai large enough to support a family according to the 

 American standard of living and supplied with sufficient machinery 

 and working capital for efficient operation is important not alone to 

 our agricultural but also to our national welfare. The characteristic 

 and precious feature of American agriculture is its large production 

 per man, and during the past decade the increase in the productivity 

 of our farms was greater than in any decade preceding. But as popu- 

 lation increases and poorer and poorer land is brought into use for 

 €rops — that is, as labor becomes more abundant and land becomes 

 scarcer — it appears probable that larger production per acre will be- 

 come more profitable than greater production per man, and that our 

 agriculture, as well as our standard of living, will more and more 

 resemble that of Europe before the war. 



