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ern farmer must be familiar with all the manual and me- 

 chanical jobs of production. He must have a knowledge of 

 money and management, so that he can buy and sell to ad- 

 vantage. He must know how, when, and where to plant and 

 to rotate his own labor and that of his hired man and of his 

 family from hour to hour, day to day, and season to season. 

 To train a farmer takes years of experience, gained mostly 

 in the school of hard knocks, aided by scientific information 

 obtained from research and extension work. The nation's ten 

 million trained farm workers are one of her greatest re- 

 sources. 



Efficiency of Farm Labor Increasing 



The American farmer is the world's most efficient producer 

 of food. In 1942, there were 10 million workers on farms in 

 the United States. They produced about 450 million tons of 

 crops, exclusive of pasture, and about 75 million tons of live- 

 stock products, or a total of approximately 525 million tons. 

 During the year, each farm worker produced about 45 tons 

 of crops, about 35 tons of which were condensed or refined 

 into seven or eight tons of the highly prized livestock prod- 

 ucts. 



Over the last quarter of a century the efficiency of the 

 farmer has increased rapidly. From before World War I to 

 the twenties the output of crops per farm worker increased 

 25 per cent. This increase, though remarkable, was not so 

 spectacular as that of the much publicized assembly lines of 

 our Detroits. From the twenties to the forties, production 

 per farm worker continued to rise. By the first three years 

 of the forties, production of food and feed crops per man had 

 increased 26 per cent over the twenties, and 58 per cent over 

 1910-14 (table 1). 



This increasing efficiency was the result of a variety of 

 causes. The rapid improvement of agricultural machinery 



