The Economics of Agriculture

The Economics of Agriculture BY A. F. CARDON

[This paper was read by the author at the annual M. I. A. officers' convention of the Utah stake. He was complimented by the officers and teachers, competent to judge, as having presented a paper containing splendid material, though the author states, as an excuse for reluctance to have it published, that it was prepared in a remarkably short given time. Students of the Senior Manual, and all who are interested in the ownership of land and the development of farms and farm methods, will find this paper especially helpful and interesting. — Editors-] It will be impossible to overemphasize the importance and far-reaching scope of the economics of agriculture. In the making of a citizen, economics always has, and always will be, a most vital force affecting him as strongly, we are bound to say, if not more strongly, than any other life factor. Man's dominant desire to live well and perpetuate himself, holds its dynamic value in his physical welfare, or his economic concerns. Take, then, that basic life pursuit —the production of food products by soil cultivation — and you have, for contemplation and consideration, a most absorbing and potent problem. The land and its products made civilized man, or made man civilized. Its possession, or the possession of its products, concerns every human being on the face of the earth, with the possible exception of those dull fishermen of the farthest arctic regions. Soil tillage, soil ownership, and soil control, affect all men to a greater or a less degree and it is noticeable that as ;

man becomes more highly cultured, the greater is his concern for those subjects. Directly in keeping with this assertion is the history of peoples. Primitive people held communal possession as progress ;

was made, individual ownership resulted, and, too, the most intensive cultivation. Only among the most highly advanced races does one find intensive farming, and I do not overlook China and Japan when say this. I So it is by no means strange that

THE ECONOMICS OF AGRICULTURE 219 we in the United States are suddenly confronting the problem of small farms and intensive cultivation. Our civilization and culture are demanding- intelligent consideration of the problems of food production, and especially is this so, as we are beginning to confront a shortage in land. This shortage in land is strange to us, because we have been approaching it, unknowingly, for such a long period. Accustomed prodigality in the matter of farm lands gave us the notion that "out west" lay an unlimited supply; but by 1890 the western frontier absorbed practically the last of such land and the American had no further opportunity to acquire from his government a free home as he had done formerly. The history of this free homesteading is filled with valuable lessons, for it comprises an account of the most remarkable acquisition of a vast empire by a sovereign people that has ever occurred in the history of the world. The American government has controlled, in one way or another, more than one billion acres of land which has been surveyed and platted rectangularly in such a way as to make land location very simple and easy. The problem of the government was how best to dispose of these vast tracts of land, as governmental development was not considered advisable. The problem was largely one of making over land titles to citizens upon those terms most conducive to the development of a strong citizenship. Taking a leaf from the experience of the nations of the world, that citizen is the best who owns his own home and works for himself and family; therefore, to give him ample land on which to build his home, rear his family and make his own living, was the plan provided. The spectacle was new for the nations. Here a government began a systematic campaign to give away the best part of a great continent. The land was being restored to the people, and all for the purpose of making that people strong, free and intelligent. And therein would the nation most benefit and forge ahead. The plan has proved to be correct; a wonderful citizenship, in many respects, has resulted. By no less than four principal methods did the people obtain the land for their own. Preemption privileges enabled the prospective farmer to purchase outrio-ht his land. )r he could make a homestead < entry, if he

220 IMPROVEMENT ERA was the head of a family, whereby he obtained 160 acres by living a certain time upon the property. By these two- methods most of the land in the humid belt of the nation went to the homesteader. Then these lands were exhausted. Only the great arid regions remained. To these lands was brought, in part, the great system of irrigation, introduced and fostered, largely, by the "Mormons"; but so limited is the scope of irrigation that the vast regions that can be brought under cultivation through dry farming has created the enlarged homestead act. By this act thousands of acres will be brought under cultivation which would have otherwise remained untouched and non-productive. Dry farming will reveal great treasures in these barren lands of the western country. As for the land already acquired from the government and in the hands of the people, its ownership is usually transferred to succeeding generations by inheritance or gift. Often by these processes fortunes in lands are lost because of profitable farms falling into incompetent and sometimes disreputable hands. The economic loss from such mismanagement perhaps cannot be averted, and must, therefore, be endured. The highest economic value to the community abides in that farmer who is the opposite of the inheritor, who acquires his land by dint of wise saving, for he comes to know the value of his farm and seeks accordingly to get the utmost from his holdings. A national example of the farmer who saves is found in France, where every farmer saves something. He either becomes owner of his farm or else puts his money in banks to accumulate to the nation's financial benefit. France, so the papers indicate of late, has forced Germany to favorable terms in the Moroccan controversy, because she held German bonds about to fall due. By virtue of her money-saving population— a population largely agricultural — she has averted one of the most significant crises of the present century. Agricultural savings are most important. I do not think much of the doctrine of marginal uitility to be taught, according to the manual, in connection with this subject. The doctrine is a very difficult one to understand thoroughly, and can be very easily dispensed with in a popular course such as is supposed to be given in the mutuals. The important thing to be driven home is to save. Every farmer boy knows

THE ECONOMICS OF AGRICULTURE 221 that he cannot save unless he has a margin above the cost of production ; common sense tells him that. But economics should teach — him something further that cost of production differs largely with the tastes and abilities of the producers, and that he should seek to hammer that cost down. Mortgages and credit may both be carefully considered by every farmer. Quite frequently the use of mortgages is paradoxical. Only a very careful farmer should mortgage, and he usually does not need to. It is the mediocre or incompetent farmer who most frequently seeks to place a mortgage on his property, and the chances for his failure are so many that he really lies in grave danger of losing his possessions. Particularly is this the case when dealing with many of the private loaning institutions in existence. The co-operative associations, such as the manual describes, seem to be far better to deal with, especially those of Germany, where high motives and strict adherence to the interests of the community prevail in the policy of the organizations. A thorough study of these German methods could result in much practical good for mutual boys. It will be observed that Germany, largely as a result of cooperative efforts, is landowning farmers, only 16.42 a nation of per cent of her farms being leased lands while in France only ;

47.2 per cent of her cultivated area is in the hands of the cultivator. While these figures do not give a proper basis for comparison, yet Germany seems to have that system which gives her farmers their own land more quickly than does the slow process of saving common to France. Much could be said of both systems, much more than what I could do at present at any profit to you. With a partial sense of proprietorship the farmer does better than as a tenant. And if there is a subject touched upon in this manual that should be emphasized more than another, it is that of farm ownership. No social or economic condition should be encouraged or leniently tolerated by the Saints, which would lend encouragement to tenancy. Not that tenancy should be forbidden, for by it very often young men get a start which they otherwise, might never have ; but rather such organizations for loaning at equitable rates be made, rather such moral tone for doing for one's self and becoming economically independent, hold sway over the land.

222 IMPROVEMENT ERA The sense of ownership stirs the best in man, while renting subverts the independent, self-reliant spirit. Certainly in this arid state of ours we have ample room for all who desire farms. There are at least twenty-two million acres here susceptible to cultivation ; nearly twenty million acres remain to be tilled. In short, only one-tenth of Utah's farming land is being farmed, nine-tenths more are waiting for that sturdy young man who desires to become independent. We are just scratching on the edge of a garden now the wise, independent young farmer ;

of the future will really till the vast fertile bed. If four hundred thousand people now possess our state, with only one-tenth of her possible farming lands touched, surely four million people can find their homes here when all is in use. In the arid west alone, so it has been computed, if the same intensive farming should prevail as in Japan, calculating the same fertility and the same growing months for both places, there could exist an empire of one hundred million people. Just think of the latent possibilities of our arid region; think of the accomplishments of reclamation and dry farming; think of the field open for irrigation; then preach the gospel of soil ownership to those young men fitted by temperament and circumstances for farming. In marketing the produce of the farm lies a problem which has long concerned the producer and the consumer the former, :

because he has so signally failed in times past to maintain stable prices for his goods, and has been so unmercifully fleeced by the middlemen the latter, because his cost of living has been juggled ;

seemingly at will by some force connected with marketing. Price isordinarily considered to be the result of supply and demand, and today we say that sugar goes up because the supply is less than the demand. In the ultimate analysis that is so, so we can teach that doctrine with safety; but the many intervening conditions check, hinder, or wholly subvert, the free working of this law. From the farm to the kitchen is a long ways in our modern complex society ; and the associations, secret organizations, secret poolings, and vast army of middlemen of various sorts, besides the intricate network of collecting and distributing mechanism, have all contributed to influence the price so that it could be raised or lowered as the various factors saw fit and could combine. Yet,

THE ECONOMICS OF AGRICULTURE 223 nevertheless, no matter how thoroughly the intervening factors are organized and can work, serious shortage or excess of crops surely influence the price. So the farmer can form co-operative associations for his own protection, such as are described in the manual, and by so doing fight those forces which tend to give him small returns for his produce but the larger factors of sup- ;

ply and demand surely mold matters in spite of him. Usually these co-operative associations have miscarried because business men have not had them in charge, or else crop disposal was comparatively easy. With the coming of keener competition, the farmers have been forced to adopt strictly business principles, and to hold together against the wholesale dealers. When farmers' organizations are financially successful, however, they can easily be made as tyrannous as the most ferocious trusts of our times. And more so, even. The great bugaboo of the tuture in the economic world is the prospect for some great trust to monopolize the output of the farms, and that trust can be made up of co-operating farmers. Monopoly, or successful partial monopoly, of farm products can work untold hardships upon the people. Let selfish human nature assert itself, even among the farming class, and one-half the consumers suffer more than from any other monopoly. As to the training and organization of farmers, again too much emphasis cannot be made. Farms have been deserted by thousands of young men because they have been mismanaged and fearfully neglected. To train the farmer along scientific lines and to organize his forces under efficient management will mean increased farm returns, and the keeping of the young to the healthful occupation of tilling the soil. The government has lent a powerful aid to the communal body by establishing agricultural colleges, where every phase of agricultural life has been made the subject of scientific study and instruction. Educate and organize the farmer along correct principles, and the nation is protected against decay, and liberty insured to the people. I cannot possibly overemphasize the great advantages to be gained by a careful, thorough, and thoughtful study of this manual. It is only suggestive in its scope; the field is broad and needs much tilling by the class leader and the scholar. But I desire to point out what I view as most fundamental in these five

:

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lessons which I have necessarily so hastily and superficially

reviewed First : The wonderful disposal of an empire of farm lands, the simple system by which the work was done, and the fact that itwas done to give to free people free farms, that their descendants might remain free. Second As well as the continuation of the first lesson, the :

liberality of the government in providing ways for disposing of arid lands that long had been regarded as deserts, a movement allied with conservation. Third : Saving and co-operation as factors in keeping the people free and independent owners of the soil.

Fourth What co-operation of producers can do for their :

own betterment, and what they can do to maintain high cost of living to needy people. Fifth Scientific agricultural education, as a factor in form- :

ing citizenship of the highest type, and in making the farm a highly organized and skillfully managed productive agency. These things, truly taught, should be constructive to the youth of Zion ; they should aid him materially in finding his place in the community, and in improving his citizenship. Provo Utah.