Labor.—A steadily increasing shortage of farm labor, improved methods whereby crops can he raised by machine rather than man power, and farm implements and sources of power with which such methods may be per fected have, fortunately, developed more or less simultaneously during the last quarter cen tury. Consequently nearly all the important farm crops can now be grown with less man power per acre than ever before, provided the work is done on a sufficiently large scale to justify the employing of the labor saving ma chinery. Nevertheless the concentration of the labor required by certain crops, whether it be man power or machine power, involves certain problems that must be taken into account in deciding which crops and how many shall be raised on any one farm.
The small grains, for instance, require in tensive labor at planting time, harvest time and threshing time, but little or none between. Corn, potatoes, sugar beets and cotton are examples of crops that require constant summer cultivation as well. The root crops and cotton, moreover, call for both early thinning or °chop ping,)) and also harvesting that can be done only by hand, or at best with hand tools.
Hay crops, on the other hand, may be raised for several years at a cost of one soil fitting and seeding and one or more annual cuttings, mainly at times when other crop or farm work is not pressing. Furthermore, a grass seeding can often be made part of the sowing of a small grain crop to be harvested the year be fore the first cutting of hay is made.
In the case of alfalfa a favorable location and season may combine to keep a farmer harvesting and curing hay crops throughout a good part of the season. Tobacco involves not only the various tasks of field culture but also the exacting and more or less tedious work of growing the plants in seed beds and planting them out in the field later on. Again, hemp calls for the heaviest and most continuous effort during the preparation and cleaning of the fibre after the crop has been cut.
Consequently the small farmer who must depend mainly on the labor of himself and one or two helpers and limited machinery should avoid a combination of crops of which the busiest seasons correspond or even overlap. Winter rye and winter wheat offer special advantages in that they involve plowing and seeding in the fall and leave the farmer free in the early spring to make preparations for other crops. On the other hand, alfalfa and
grass crops may be fitted into a farm schedule either as spring or late summer sown crops.
In some cases the farmer may find it best to complete the handling of a crop all al one time as in the case of corn silage; in others it may be advisable to simply harvest and store it (like wheat, oats, rye or buckwheat) to be threshed out under cover during the greater leisure of midwinter. Hay, too, may be baled for sale in the field, or stacked or stored in a barn to he baled and shipped later in the season if necessary. The problem in any case is to take into account all the conditions that make a crop easy or difficult to grow, both by itself and in relation to other crops, and in re gard to local and contemporary conditions.
Shipping.— Market demands and shipping facilities are local problems that must be taken into account by each farmer as his observation and common-sense dictate. Proximity to a large market usually means high priced land, which in turn necessitates crops of relatively high value, although in general farm crops are none of them valuable in the sense that vege tables, flowers, small fruits, etc., are profitable for suburban cultivation. Consequently the problem in most farm sections is one of ad vantageous shipping facilities rather than one of immediate and nearby sale. Bulky crops such as hay, cotton, sugar-cane and, to a less extent, potatoes are obviously less suited to a location involving a long wagon haul to the railroad or market than are grains, seeds, etc. Many crops, of course, are most advantageously and profit ably utilized as feed for livestock and marketed as beef, pork or dairy products. In this con nection also there must not be lost sight of the fact that in this way there is kept on the farm a large amount of plant food, in the form of manure, that would otherwise be sold off the place and have to be replaced ultimately by purchased manure or fertilizer. Thus the type of farming followed influences not only the chdice of crops grown, but also the main tenance of the fertility of the soil and through that the ultimate possibilities and success of the whole business of the farm.
E. L. D. SEvmotnt, Associate Editor, The Country Life Press.