By R.W. Green
Straight thinking on any subject requires something more than a willingness to think straight. This is particularly true in thinking about agricultural problems which cannot be solved like a simple problem in arithmetic.
Agriculture is a complex business and without a background of facts one is likely to get confused in thinking about its many problems.
The other day I was talking to a white-haired, white-bearded farmer who, for all his years, has kept pace with progress. He is not only a good farmer, but a leader in his community with a mind open to consider new ideas and ready to try them out.
Speaking for himself and his brother farmers, he said: “We live on hope. We plant in hope, cultivate in hope, harvest in hope, and start to market in hope. If we have a bad year, we hope that next year will be better.”
“We live on hope!” Perhaps that is one of the chief weaknesses of the farmer and the reason why he has continued to produce food and raw materials for the rest of the world, because his hopes are about all he gets for his labor in “off years.”
The self-contained, self-supporting farm is a thing of the past. Every one will agree that it is better to diversify and produce food and feed at home, but the industrial revolution changed farming conditions the while it made possible the modern city.
Whether he likes it or not, the modern farmer is a specialist, and like other specialists he must depend upon outside enterprises for a part of his living. The farmer’s clothes, his tools and many things needed in his home are now made in factories. To obtain these things he must have money. The days of barter are gone, never to return.
This means that the farmer, like the town business man, is both buyer and seller, and hence subject to all the influences and pressure of the commercial world.
Since this is true, the farmer must adapt himself to these changed conditions or become a victim of the new order.
In any case, the present situation calls for straight thinking not only by farmers, but by town folks whose fortunes are bound up with those of the farmer, even though both parties do not yet realize it.
From page 10 of the Carolina Jeffersonian, Raleigh, N.C., Aug. 6, 1924
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073001/1924-08-06/ed-1/seq-10/#words=AUGUST+6%2C+1924
No comments:
Post a Comment