344 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



farms in the South Atlantic states from 376.4 acres in 1850 to 108.4 

 acres in 1900. 



Throughout the United States, the increase or decrease in the 

 average size of farms, therefore, is due to the changes incident to the 

 adjustment of the agricultural operations of each locality to those 

 branches of husbandry to which it is best adapted. It may be said 

 that the average area of farms tends to approximate the area from 

 which the farmer possessing average capital can secure the largest 

 returns. 



b) THE FAILURE OF "BONANZA" FARMING 1 

 BY HENRY F. BLANCHARD 



The first grain producers of California attempted to crop as large 

 an acreage as possible at a minimum cost. In order to do this, at 

 that time all that was necessary was very shallow plowing (3 or 4 

 inches in depth), broadcasting the seed and harrowing it into the soil. 

 This was continued from year to year and fairly good crops were 

 produced for a while. In the pioneer days the interior valleys were 

 not considered of much value for the production of crops on account 

 of the small amount of rainfall. At that time certain companies were 

 enabled to secure large tracts of this land at a nominal price. These 

 companies discovered that this land would produce good yields of 

 grain and it was cropped on a very large scale. Since that time there 

 has been a gradual breaking up of these large farms into smaller ones. 

 However, there are still too many large ones; until the farms are so 

 reduced in size that they may be properly handled we may look for 

 continued low production and further depletion hi the soil fertility of 

 the wheat lands. 



NOTE. We are all familiar, too, with the fact that the enormous 

 wheat farms which were so striking a feature of the early days of one- 

 crop wheat farming in the Red River Valley of Dakota have had to 

 give way to the more moderate-sized and more diversified farms which 

 apparently are to characterize our permanent type of agriculture. 

 This cutting up of the great grain farms, and the mammoth cattle 

 ranches as well, is reflected in the following figures of the census of 

 1910: "In the West there was a decrease in the average size of farms 

 from 694.9 acres in 1850 to 312.9 acres in 1880. This was followed 



1 Adapted from Bulletin 178, Bureau of Plant Industry, United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, pp. 8-n. 



