Both the "plantations" of the South and the "bonanza farms" or "ranches" of the West are being disintegrated. And throughout the country, while the average acreage per farm steadily decreases, the representative farm meanwhile continues large. In some regions consolidation is active; in others, subdivision. Both economic and social purposes are being, realized in this process: a sufficient acreage for most profitable farming under our conditions and a means of retaining "on the land" the oncoming generations of the farm families.
But this necessarily involves a more "in tensive agriculture." The "making of a farm" has been succeeded by the "producing of crops! and is now being replaced by "marketing" as the cardinal farm problem. In the past, Ameri-. can agriculture has been controlled by the ideal of "bumper crops." Now, the farmer is realiz ing, under leadership, that the crop must be "worth what it costs.° The days of cheap and rich land are past.
Present conditions and tendencies are indi cated by .the general statistics of agriculture presented in the census of 1910. These showed 6,361,502 farms with an average acreage of 138.1, of which 75.2 acres was improved land. The acreage increased only 48 per cent since 1900. The value of farm property (total value $40, 991,449,090) had risen 100.5 per cent in the dec ade, and that of land alone from $15.57 to $32.40 per acre.
These figures show the wide opportunity for more intensive farming, as well as its necessity, with the practical exhaustion of new lands, and the rapid rise of values resulting from increased productivity as well as .speculation. They also indicate that the American farmer is still es sentially a °cheap land" farmer.
The population data of the same census also show that the rural population (49,344,883) in creased by only 112 per cent while the urban increase for a corresponding population (42, 623,383) was three-fold (34.8). This represents the climax of a long process of °rural depopula tion" as the result of unsatisfactory economic and social conditions. • For while great progress has been made in American farming and farm life from colonial days to the present, and the United States De partment of Agriculture, as well as the semi official Country Life Commission (1908), can announce a °general prosperity," yet conditions have always been, alike in the oldest as in the newest parts of the country, not wholly de sirable, and the contrast with city and indus trial conditions growingly close and apparent.
The country never has lost as a whole, although different States and localities have. On the contrary there has been a steady and wholesome gain in population. But the great "agricultural shift" from East to West, along with some movement from the farm to the town and city, has had correlated with it certain elements of °decadence," both economic and social. And these have been sufficiently intensive to give rise, in certain times and places, to °agrarian dis content," often approaching violence, and at last finding expression in political activity, and to occasion the rise of a °rural problem" throughout the country.
The end of an epoch in American agriculture and rural life was reached with the practical passage of the free land frontier in the years after 1890. The acreage of farm land which had doubled from 1860 to 1900 increased by less than 5 per cent in the next 10 years. The cities continued to grow ; the demand for agri cultural products both at home and abroad in creased. "Rural depopulation" had to be cor rected and the era of "intensive farming" entered upon.
An early sign of the new order is the dis appearance of the agricultural "belts" which had characterized our °exploitive agriculture" of the past. The South is steadily diversifying its crops; the West is passing from the condi tion of range country; stock-raising is spread ing; dairying and horticulture are being found in all parts of the country where general op portunity offers. A great variety of agricultural specialties are appearing locally. The areas de voted to different crops have 'been greatly extended.
There has been an especially noteworthy de velopment associated with the rise of vast urban markets. In the vicinity of all the large cities "market gardening" has become a most profit able branch of agriculture and represents the climax of intensive culture. And not less re markable is the use of °truck farming," carried on in places remote from markets, producing the greater proportion of vegetables consumed in cities from 500 to 1,000 miles distant. The South Atlantic States are particularly interested in this industry.