Evidently the horse and mule is good enough for the average North Carolina farmer. From the University News Letter we learn that North Carolina ‘does not rank high in the use of farm tractors,” the percentage of tractors in the State being much lower than the average for the United States. The News Letter not only tells us that we use few tractors but it gives the further information the State ranks low “in the combined value of all farm machinery per farm.” The News Letter thus puts the data:
“According to the 1925 census of agriculture, there were 293,482 farms in North Carolina, of which 7,759 reported tractors. Only one State, Texas, reported more farms, but 17 states reported more farm tractors. Which means that when reduced to a comparable basis, per farm say, North Carolina ranks very low. North Carolina has 4.4 per cent of the nation’s farms but only 1.6 per cent of the farm tractors. Eight percent of the farms of the natin reported tractors, against only 1.6 per cent for North Carolina. North produces a large amount of farm wealth each year but she does it largely on the basis of a vast expenditure of human labor. Our per worker yield is not very large, due mainly to the fact that human labor on our farms is not reinforced with any fair amount of labor-saving, profit-producing machinery.”
There are two factors which enter into this matter—the size of North Carolina farms and the number of tenants. Our farms can be cultivated and maintained with livestock and the tenants haven’t the money to purchase the machinery, including tractors.
From the editorial page of The Concord Daily Tribune, July 1, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-07-01/ed-1/seq-4/
No comments:
Post a Comment