Farmers ’ Efficiency: The Sky’s No Limit
The 1950’$ and the 1960’s saw
new technologies make com
puters our modern-day oracles,
space satellites our manmade
moons.
But despite the sensation of
these achievements, progress in
agriculture, man’s oldest
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science, came close to out
stripping strides in other sciences
during those years—though
agricultural gains received far
less attention.
To understand why
agricultural technology gained so
much so quickly, it’s necessary to
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take two interrelated factors into
account: the halving of the farm
population and the rapid adoption
of new ways of doing things which
resulted in drastic changes in the
mix of farm inputs.
One way of roughly measuring
how much agriculture
progressed: the headcount
method.
Back in 1950, one U.S. farm
worker produced enough food
and fiber for himself and 15 other
people. Two of these people lived
abroad and were supplied by our
exports.
In 1971, one U.S. farmworker
produced enough for 47 other
people—7 lived abroad.
Population shifts put a
premium on laborsaving farm
technology.
By 1971 farm numbers had
sunk to less than 3 million, about
half as many as in 1950. Farm
worker numbers more than
halved over the same decades,
standing at just under 4Vfe million
in 1971, compared with 1950’s 10
million. Farm operators and
their families generally account
for about three-fourths of the
farm working force.
The exodus from the farm and
increased wage rates were im
portant incentives in the rapid
adoption of new laborsaving
technology during the 1950’s and
1960’5.
Technological advances are
hardly new to U.S. agriculture
but the speed with which farmers
embraced them was.
In the past two decades far
mers accepted far more quickly
than in the past the new seeds,
machines, and production and
management systems that would
increase their output and save
labor.
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For example, it took far longer
for hybrid corn to catch on with
farmers than it took for hybrid
sorghums.
Hybrid corn seed became
commercially available in 1933,
and yields then were about 23
bushels per acre. By 1950 about
three-fourths of all corn acres
were seeded with hybrids and
yields averaged 38 bushels an
acre. Now virtually all acres are
planted to hybrids Average yield
in 1971 was 87 bushels
Improved and larger planting
equipment, along with
mechanical harvesting, reduced
the man-hours required to
produce 100 bushels of corn from
40 hours in 1950 to 7 in 1971.
Farmers quickly accepted
hybrid sorghum which appeared
in the mid-1950’5, shifting almost
completely to the new varieties
within 5 years. Yields have gone
from 21 bushels in 1950 to about 54
nowadays.
The higher yielding hybrids
also encouraged sorghum
growers to increase irrigation
with over a third of presentday
acreage watered compared with
15 percent in prehybrid days
In all, the adoption of new
technologies increased crop
output per acre over 55 percent
between 1950 and 1971.
Livestock labor efficiency also
benefited during the two decades
Total hours of labor to produce
milk, meat and eggs fell from
1950’s 5.5 billion to 2.3 billion in
1971.
For example, poultry and egg
production doubled while labor
needs in the poultry industry
declined more than two-thirds.
Meat animal production in
creased by 50 percent, but labor
to produce meat animals was off
about one-third.
Farm inputs remained about
the same overall during the two
decades but the mix changed
drastically.
Purchased inputs gained
nearly 50 percent in 1950 totals In
the mechanical category, it
wasn’t just an increase in
numbers, machines that could do
more work were constantly in
troduced.
Consider tractors. Tractor
numbers increased over one
third while horsepower more
than doubled. While 1950’s
average tractor had 27 hp., 1971’s
had 45 hp Distributed over the
farm labor force, each farm
worker had 47 hp at his disposal
in 1971, compared to 10 in 1950
Along with increased tractor
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power came improvements in
other types of machinery. For
example, the self-propelled
combine sported a cutting edge of
7 feet as the 1950’s began. The
1970 models cut up to 25 feet.
In 1954 the introduction of the
picker-sheller head permitted the
combine to enter the cornfields
In 1970, a good harvest rate was
10 bushels per minute, picked and
shelled, from an eight-row head
Other puchased inputs that
have gone up since 1950 include
fertilizer and pesticides, each up
five times, and mixed feeds,
whose use more than doubled.
The labor input obviously
declined drastically and rapidly
It took 151 billion hours to
produce the 1950 agricultural
output In 1971, man-hours had
plunged 57 percent to 6 5 billion
Cropland harvested declined
just 10 percent during the 1950’s
and remained rather stable
through 1970 Cropland harvested
rose somewhat during 1971 This
year it returned to the level of the
past decade The reduction in
farm numbers was nearly offset
by the 83-percent expansion in
average farm size from 213 to 389
acres
Agriculture will continue to
become more productive but the
experts at USDA expect things to
slow a bit from the lightning pace
of the past two decades
Comparisons between op
timum crop yields and average
yields suggest that future
national crop production could
improve without the introduction
of any new technologies
For example, the best corn
famers are now obtaining yields
of 150 to 200 bushels per acre and
cotton variety yield tests show
yields 50 percent greater than the
average farmer is obtaining
National averages stand at 87
bushels lor corn and 438 pounds
for cotton
We have been discussing
changes during the last two
decades but what happened
between 1970 and 1971 7 Farm
output per hour of farm labor
continued to climb during 1971,
gaming 11 percent for crops and 8
percent for livestock over the
previous year
The inputs remained about the
same in both 1970 and 1971 but
these produced 9 percent more in
1971 than in 1970 due to better
than average growing conditions,
increased use of available farm
resources, especially land, and
greater application of improved
technology
9