FARM MANAGEMENT PRACTICE OK CHESTER. COUNTY, PA. 15 



TYPES OF FARMING. 



One of the worst mistakes a farmer can make is to choose unwisely 

 the enterprises that are to constitute the basis of his farm busi- 

 ness. The swiftness with which disaster overtakes the man who 

 makes a serious mistake of this kind causes the rapid elimination of 

 types of farming wholly unfit in a given locality, so that, at least in 

 the older sections of the country, we seldom find types of farming 

 distinctly unsuited to their surroundings. But serious errors of this 

 kind are made on a large scale in certain regions which are now un- 

 dergoing settlement, and in others where real estate promotion 

 schemes are based on the utterly false assumption that merely because 

 the soil and climate of a region are adapted to the most intensive 

 types of farming all the land can be devoted to the production of 

 the most intensive crops without reference to the possibility of 

 marketing the products. 



In all sections of the country changes in economic or other con- 

 ditions sometimes render well-established types of farming unsatis- 

 factory, and it becomes necessary for farmers to make more or less 

 radical changes in their practice. Attention has already been called 

 to the changes in the eastern States which began about 1840, and 

 which involved the practical destruction of the eastern sheep in- 

 dustry and a very great reduction in the importance of beef cattle 

 and swine in the same region. 



Another example of the effect of changes in economic conditions 

 necessitating changes in type of farming is seen in the gradual 

 transfer in recent years of the butter-making industry from the 

 Eastern States to the Middle West. In the latter region, because 

 of the larger size of the farms, the greater natural fertility of the 

 soil, and the more general use of labor-saving machinery, grains and 

 forage can be produced more cheaply than in the North Atlantic 

 States. Early in the history of the Middle West the quantity of grain 

 and forage produced made f eedstuffs very cheap, and especially in the 

 northern portion of the region the production of butter gradually 

 became one of the leading industries. In some localities, especially 

 in Wisconsin, cheese making also became a dominant enterprise. 

 Butter and cheese can be shipped to eastern cities at relatively small 

 expense. Under these conditions the makers of butter and cheese 

 in the Eastern States found themselves hard pressed by the competi- 

 tion from the West. A severe depression followed, and even yet the 

 price of farm land in the East is only just beginning to reflect the 

 better times that succeeded with the general development of the 

 market-milk industry incidental to the enormous growth of eastern 

 cities. Both butter and cheese making have been largely transferred 

 to the West during the past third of a century. 



