Model Farms 85 



gestion has recently been made by high author- 

 ity, advising the establishing of one model 

 farm in every agricultural county, to be pref- 

 erably under federal control. Passing the 

 assumption that a 30-acre or 40-acre farm is 

 the most desirable unit, and also the specific 

 plan of rotations and style of farming, sev- 

 eral underlying doubts may be expressed on 

 the project: (i) Such farms would only indi- 

 rectly utilize the natural and normal experience 

 of the community: they would be essentially 

 exotic or would at least be more or less arbi- 

 trary and imposed; (2) a "model" farm 

 usually has little influence, since it is main- 

 tained under conditions that farmers cannot 

 hope to secure; (3) the object-lesson method 

 of teaching is not the most fruitful; it is not 

 dynamic; it is proverbial that persons living 

 near the very best farms, or about experiment 

 station or college farms, may profit very little by 

 them; (4) one farm in a county is by no means 

 sufficient either to represent the dominating 

 agricultural conditions of the county or to 

 interest all the people in the county; (5) the 



