Booms, Busts, and Recoveries Message Board

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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries

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To: Ilaine who wrote (22794)	8/17/2002 10:39:17 PM
From: Joan Osland Graffius	Read Replies (3) of 74559

CobaltBlue, Thanks for your response. In reality the tractor was not in use for productive farming until the early 40's and then only by farmers that were willing to try new ideas. My father was the first farmer in our area to buy a tractor and it was not exactly productive since machinery to work the soil with these tractors was limited. He could do some conversion of the machinery used with horses but is was not very productive. There was not a good infrastructure for parts and maintenance during these early days and the farmer was his own maintenance person and the blacksmith a very close friend. <smile> I would guess that it was during the mid to late 1940's when the conversion to automation was extensive through out our farming industry. As far as fertilizer is concerned, I don't think it was used extensively until the 1970's. Most farms were self contained until the 1960's and had cattle which provided sufficient fertilizer. Farmers would rotate crops and use crops like alfalfa to generate nitrogen in the soil. This crop was productive as there was at least 2 cuttings of hay and one of seed during the year. Weed control was very non productive as the farmer would summer fallow a percent of the land every year with no crop to generate revenues. I believe weed control has contributed more to productivity than fertilizer. It was my generation that left the farms for urban jobs. This started during the late 1950's as only one child in the family was required to carry on with farming the land. IMO, the real productivity has come during the 1970's until today. One farmer today can easily handle 10,000 acres and only needs help (one or two people) during the spring and fall. This has lead to the small operators inability to compete and massive bankruptcies with this group of farmers. The smart ones just quit kept their land and rented it to the farmers that wanted to expand, but unfortunately a lot of folks kept on going until all was lost - kind of like the stock market today - we still have a large group of people in a declining market and they will be there until nothing is left. <g> I think there were other dynamics during this period as well. The country was busy with the space program and there were plenty of exciting jobs for engineers and other folks to contribute to this effort. We also had a generation that entered college using the GI bill after WWII that were being productive in pushing technology the next step. Joan

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