NEXT STAGE IN FARMING

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LXII, Issue 19, 11 March 1941, Page 4

NEXT STAGE IN FARMING

PROCESSING OWN PEODUCTS

AN AMERICAN'S BRIGHT

IDEA

Paul M. Mulliken came up with the idea that may turn thousands of farmers into manufacturers, says the Christian Science Monitor. He is the executive secretary of the National Retail Farm Equipment Association, and in outlining his plan said:

"Farmers lose too much of their dairy and crop profits to middlemen, so why shouldn't they set up canneries, quick freezing plants and other processing machinery on their own land, plough under some of the profit-taking of the middlemen and make more money? Pure production has put the farmer, by and large, in the red. If he doesn't take back some of the processing chores he turned over to others in the machine age, we may expect an American peasantry."

Mr Mulliken suggested the farmer not only could can his own corn and tomatoes and make his own corn syrup but sell it to his town neighbour as well.

"Do you know that last year the farmers spent 1,000,000,000 dollars of their 9,000,000,000 dollars income for food?" he asked. "The farmer can't go on that way^ That's one of the reasons the rural population is drifting into town, broke."

That's why Mr Mulliken predicts "a revolution in the farm field as far-reaching as the one that came with tractors and power machinery. And when it comes—l hope to see it by 1950—the farmer is going to be processing his own soybeans and cotton seed for plastic bases used in steering wheels, cowls and dozens of other articles. He is going into the cellulose business, too, indirectly by processing corn stalks and grain straw

"Quick freezing in his own refrigerating plant will keep perishables fr.esh until he can sell, as he chooses and not as a victim of a flooded market."

Mr Mulliken said labour to run the factories would come right from the farms. Farmers have more idle time than they ever had since they can farm five times as fast with machinery as with horses. The hinge on which the idea swings is the development of low-cost and simply operated machinery. The defence programme may slow up the movement, but not for long, he said.

"It's not just wishful thinking. We've got to put more money into ■ the farmers' pockets and this is a | logical way of doing it." j cleaning work more difficult.