Norwich bulletin. [volume] (Norwich, Conn.) 1895-2011, 1915-12-04
THE BIG FARM AND LITTLE FARM
CONTROVERSY

to keep on moving forward with the
rest of the universe, it is sure that
there will be in the future many
changes in our methods. Some will be
due to new discoveries of which we
ancients have at present not even an
inkIing nor a suspicion. Some will be
due to gradual improvements such as
those which, in our own time. nave
transformed the first slow, cumbrous,
heavy, inefficient and costly moving
machines into models of fitness and
convenience.
We shall do better farming in the
persons of our grandchildren than we
did in the persons of our granddaddies
or than we can do in our own and at
present.
If so much be accepted as probable,
then the arguments which favor the
big farm, under present conditions,
may not favor it under better condi-
lions and with wiser farming. Certain
ly, most of the advances we have made
in the last generation point with in
creasing force to the wisdom of better
rather than larger farming.
I've often thought of the case of
Clark OF Higganum, whose grand
father couldn't make a living on $50
acres but who, by wiser management
and from fuller knowledge, made a
big profit year after year from only
1 acres of that $50, and those 10
about the poorest of the lot!
Remember one thing: 1t isn't the
amount of dirt you work that brings
success, but the amount of crops you
raise and sell. and the ratio of gain
you get for yourself.
What shall it profit man to own
a whole county for a farm. if he can
neither fertiliZe it adequately nor cul-
tiVate it properly, nor harvest it eco
nomicalIy-nor get his money back
from the crop?
How many times have we heard, and
ourselves used, the expression that
So-an-So was "land-poor"?
David Rankin could manage 10000
acre ccrnfieid and make money off it
But David Rankin had strong, new
land of exceptional fertility to work
on. And David Rankin was himself
very exceptional man.
There are about as few David Ran
kins in the history or farming as there
are NapoleonS in the annals of war
You and 1 don't belong in the class
with either!
1t was no less man than Liebig
who said, years ago: 1T is not the
land itself that constitutes the farm
ers wealth, but 1t is in the constitu
ents of the soil which serve for the
nutrition of plants that this wealth
truly consists"
That is to say, a farmers wealth
doesn't lie in the number of acres he
owns, but in what is in those acres
and what he can get out of them.
There's one thing reasonably clear:
the poorer farming one does the more
ceres he must farm to get a, big crop
Poor farming on unfertilized and
Scantingly cultivated land may re-
turn a crop of 25 bushels of corn to
the acre. Good farming on highly
fortified and cultivated land may pro-
duce a hundred bushels to the acre
Naturally, # one is going to need a
hundred bushels and is planning to
grow it the first way, he'll need four
acres to get his crops.
But that doesn't prove that poor
work on four acres is better farming
than goes on one acre. Far from it.
1t simply proves that the poorer farm
er man is the more land he needs to
slOSh round on.
Of course, that isn't all there is to
it. There are other things to be
thought of, other factors to be reck-
oned with.
Some land is so poor, naturally that
it takes four acres of it to do a single
decent acres work. And it may be,
in some cases that the cost of put
ing such land in good heart would