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G I" AG TRAINING 



Serious Young Farm Veterans Learn 

 Finest Modern Agricultural Practices 

 Through On-The-Job Programs 



WHAT about the on-the-job training for veterans? 

 Has it helped returning service men to get started 

 farming ? 

 After talking to young veterans now farming 

 on their own, the answer, you will find, is yes. 

 It is helping in two ways. Through an extensive train- 

 ing program that is employing the best in teaching talent. 

 And through generous financial payments. 



Many of the teachers are vocational agricultural instruc- 

 tors. Others are successful farmers, farm managers, and 

 others, whose experience qualifies them to teach. 



One of these instructors, held in high esteem by his ex- 

 GI students, is H. P. Erwin, who teaches in the Mattoon high 

 school. He is one of 440 vocational agricultural teachers 

 and 700 special instructors engaged as part-time teachers for 

 veterans in Illinois. 



Erwin teaches a class of self-employed veterans, men 

 farming for themselves. One of Erwin's students is Fred 

 Turner, 28-year old ex-army sergeant. His on-the-job train- 

 ing under the guidance of Erwin, his instructor, has helped 

 Turner in many ways. Turner and Erwin have worked to- 

 gether well. 



M 



Student Fred Erwin (right) iliows liis instructor, H. P. Erwin liif 

 liigii-grade com crop. In iMiclcground is wide-sweeping gross 

 waterway Erwin learned value of in G I vocational agricultural 



class. 



r 



Young Turner was discharged from the army about 

 three years ago and now farms 400 acres which he and his 

 father rent. 



"One of the first problems I've had to tackle has been 

 to check gully and sheet erosion," Turner said recently. Here 

 is how his on-the-job training helped. 



He took soil samples of all his fields and had the sam- 

 ples tested at the Coles County Farm Bureau soils laboratory. 

 This helped him establish soil-building legumes. 



Turner also has planted a large corn field on the con- 

 tour. One of his biggest projects has been to hire a bull- 

 dozer to grade shut a deep gully on the farm. Where this 

 five-foot ditch once divided the field he now has successfully 

 established a 200-feet-wide grass waterway. 



Through his GI classes Turner, with the help of his in- 

 structor, mapped out a livestock program for his farm, con- 

 sisting of a beef cow herd, a flock of ewes, and from 400 to 

 500 hogs. 



The GI classes have enabled Turner to meet other vet- 

 erans with similar problems and to talk things over with 

 them. He used the school's shop to build a grain wagon 

 box, and the welder to fix broken machine parts. , 



Appreciates the Help 



Turner, like most of the GI's, appreciates the help it has 

 given him. 



"I don't think you'd find any group of veterans in any 

 trade or profession who take their work in classes any more 

 seriously than we do," Turner said recently. 



This substantiates the word of J. E. Hill, chief of agri- 

 cultural education for Ilhnois. 



"I believe that most of the bad situations have been 

 eliminated. Attendance is excellent, absence is a rare thing. 

 In my opinion, the present program is effective and is a good 

 educational program." 



What about the self-employed veteran as a student? 

 "They make the best student a teacher could have in his 

 classroom," Erwin says. "Veterans are eager to learn. And 

 equally important, if they are farming for themselves, they 

 can put what they learn into practice." 



The financial payments the program provides have been 

 a lifesaver to such veterans as Ben Wither, 27, an ex-marine, 

 who started farming this spring. He also farms near Mattoon 

 in Coles county. 



Everything about Illinois farming was new to Wither. 

 He moved up here last winter from Brightwater, Ark., for a 

 second start. He had been com- 

 pletely wiped out on his 44-acre 

 chicken farm by a tornado that de- 

 stroyed the town, killing among 

 others, his sister's baby and the baby's 

 paternal grandparents. 



"I needed help with every- 

 thing," Wither says. "The kind of 

 machinery to buy, how and when 

 to plant. And the payments, to tide 

 me over until my first crop, were a 

 real lifesaver." 



As a self-employed veteran with 

 two dependents. Wither is entitled to 

 $97.50 from the government, pro- 

 vided his earnings over the year 

 do not exceed $290 a month. 

 The ceilings and payments vary, depending on the num- 



Bill Whher 



(Continued on page 34) 



I. A. A. RECORD 





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