Cash Farm Research Articles

Special Problems in Agricultural Economics Extension in the South

A lot of changes and many problems can develop from the loss of 3,500,000 acres in cotton such as Georgia experienced in the past 35 years. Also the 16,000,000 fewer acres of cotton in the South have given great concern to our people in many fields heretofore not considered important. The South now gets about 63 per cent of its cash farm income from crops compared to 80 per cent in 1924. Livestock, which provided onefifth of the cash receipts in 1924, gave 37 per cent of all farm income dollars in 1950.

Some Economic Consequences of Federal Aid and Subsidies to Southern Agriculture

To speculate about the long-range consequences of an economic policy is a luxury often reserved for good times. Agriculture in the United States and in the South has been faced with a series of crises demanding immediate solutions ever since the federal government began its subsidy and control programs. During the first part of the period the nation was suffering from vast unemployment of its labor and resources with a consequently greater depression in agricultural incomes.' For southern agriculture the problem was not so much one of obtaining fair and adequate income as one of assuring an income sufficient to remove at least some of the widespread economic distress. During the war years most aims were subordinated to the larger purpose of winning the war. Then the problem became one of increasing and directing production to meet the requirements of a war economy. Perhaps now, however, there is time to engage in the luxury of thinking about longer-term problems. Measured in terms of parity, farm prices in September 1946 were higher than they had been since May 1920. In 1945 cash farm income and government payments amounted to 3.9 billion dollars in the Southeast compared with 796 million dollars for 1932 or an increase of 393 per cent. During the same period cash farm income throughout the United States rose 354 per cent. Cash farm income and government payments in the 13 southeastern states were 83 per cent as much as total cash farm income was for the United States as a whole in 1932.2

Estimate of Series E Bond Purchases by Farmers

B,Y GREATLY increasing cash farm income, the war has intensified the need for new series that will reflect changes in special aspects of the financial condition of farmers. From the beginning of the war more than ordinary interest has followed changes in the value of farmers' physical assets like real estate and livestock, and changes in farm debt. It is quite generally recognized that even more pronounced changes may be occurring in farmers' holdings of certain financial assets. During this period of unusually high cash farm income, restricted markets, and enlarged opportunities and obligations to invest in securities of the Federal Government, it is likely that the pattern of the disposition of farm income has been altered considerably and is contributing to the rapid growth of financial assets, like currency, bank deposits, and Government bonds. These financial assets have special significance at this time as they are almost completely liquid and would suffer no depreciation if a recession of prices from wartime levels were to reduce the values of the physical assets. They will, therefore, have an important influence on the ability of farmers to adjust their operations to postwar conditions and they will constitute the farmers' best hedge against a possible deflation. To obtain a somewhat more complete and useful picture of the decided changes which were being wrought by the war in the financial condition of farmers, the Bureau of Agricultural Economics last year undertook to estimate the volume of currency, bank deposits, and Government bonds held by farmers on January 1, 1940 and annually thereafter. This paper is concerned with the Bureau's estimate of the volume of United States savings bonds (Series E) that have been bought by farmers in the United States (Table 1). It is believed that at least 92 per cent of all United States savings bonds purchased by farmers are of this series. Elsewhere these amounts have been presented as the basis of estimates of the value of United States savings bonds held by farmers.' The purposes of this paper are (1) to describe the

Extension Program for Poultry Sanitation and Disease Prevention in Alabama

The poultry industry in Alabama has practically doubled in value during the past five years until today it ranks second to cotton in actual farm cash income when compared with all other farm products. There has been considerable interest in the development of specialized poultry farms, but for the most part this growth is due to the increased number and size of farm flocks. It is the latter that offers our greatest problem in the control of poultry disease and the adoption of preventative and sanitary measures. It is often difficult to convince the farmflock owner that the continuous raising of poultry on the same soil, year after year, in addition to the increase in number of birds tends to increase disease. The climatic conditions of our section, while presenting many advantages for successful poultry raising, are conducive to the growth of various parasites and poultry diseases.Realizing this situation .