A NEW FARMER.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 12 November 1924, Page 8

A NEW FARMER.

HENRY FORD’S VISION. % ANIMALLESS FARMS. Henry Ford believes that the farmers’ only. salvation is the machine-labour-saving process that revolutionised the factory. . in a big swivel chair in his secretary’s office, Mr Ford leaned back and assumed hie characteristic pose. Both feet on the seat of his cnair, knees hunched under his chin, hands clasped around them, he looked as if he had all the time in the world. Yet he had driven that morning from Grand Rapids, and had a dozen people outside who had waited, some of them a solid week, to see him. “Mr Ford, every legislature in the world—hot only in the United States, but in Australia, India and Africa, is perpetually trying to cure the farmers’ ills by legislation. How would you cure them ?”

REPLACING HUMAN ENERGY

a fixed price for wheat. I’m against that. It would be about as effective as regulating the traffic of the planets by legislation. Economic law is beyond the reach of political law. “I have no immediate solution for the farmers’ problems,”. Mr y Ford continued slowly, “only some ideas which may come about in a decade or two. There will be as great a development in farming during the next 20 years as there has been in manufacturing during the last 20. By that I mean that the farmer will replace human energy with mechanical energy. The factories have thrown out their crude hand-driven machinery for modern plants, in which one can feed one,. two, three ol- more machines, tripling or quadrupling the output. It’s about time the farmer woke up and threw out his horse-driven and hack-breaking tools for labour-saving machinery. Within a few years- a farm depending solely on horse and hand power will be* as much of a curiosity as a factory run by a treadmill. TIME IS MONEY. “'The most inefficient thing in the' world is the farmer. No old-fashioned farmer ever ’made money. The trouble with the farmer is that he doesn’t figure his own Hihe as valuhhle 1 . Tim© is the most valuable thing in the world, but lie doesn’t know it. One day we had 72 tractors working on omv Dearborn farih. Some farmers stopped fqp a minute on their way. to Detroit and said they must stop longer and se© it all on their way back. When they referred that afternoon t-he field was finished.

. “Just because , the fa'rmer .starts at five- in the morning and finishes at seven in the evening he thinks he Works. But _ long hours don’t mean work accomplished. If the farmer cut Ctit some of his . back-breaking drudgery, he wouldn’t find it so hard ,to keep; the young men on the farm. We can’t get people to t do back-breaking labour, even in the cities. It costs more than to hire good mechanics.” “How much time: should the. farmer spend .at his work?” was asked, “Ahoiit twenty-five intensive days a year, providing he has machinery and hires help. I consider hiring extra men as economy rather than an extravagance. It permits you to finish one job and get.on with the next. Most farmers are .slaves .to., their animals. They stick on their farms, : tlie‘ year round, night and day, nursing a few cows and, horses. ” ELIMINATING FARM ANIMALS. “Dk> you advocate farms without animals?”

.‘‘l do”.. .was Mr Ford’s empahtic answer. “The . horse is so inefficient, I marvel he has lasted this long. He eate his head off in the stable ,265 days Sf. year, and generates less power for the fuel he consumes than any source of energy save the elephant. “Cows should be concentrated on dairy farms, run in conjunction with' cheese and .butter factories. But the day will come when the cow is just as rare as, the horse. She will be replaced by a machine process, manufacturing milk xriore efficiently than her crude system. It is a simple matter to take the samecdreal's that cows eat and make thefn into milk that is superior to the natural article, and hot subject to tuberculosis. Our laboratories have demonstrated this fact.” “What will we do fdf meat?’’

‘ Eventually we will .replace meat with a scientific manufactured substitute, Meat, is not essential.” “Most farmers keep ' cattle partly I°?*, 4£ eir manure, which is used as a fertiliser,” was pointed out. « ( Manufacture your own .fertilisers,” Mr Ford shorted. “Take your nitrates from the air.—it can -be done very cheaply on a big scale. Also we have found on oifr Dearborn farm that deep ploughing— say, 10 inches, instead of B—increased8 —increased our yield 10 bushels to the. acre, and refreshed our soil yearly.” FARM AND FACTORY. “If the farmer reduces his workmg days to 25 a. year, what will he do with the rest of hie time?”

Mr Ford smiled. “Why not slaughter our animals, mill our wheat, and place a dozen and one other industries right out in our villages, where the farmer can . work part time in, the factory and the factory hand can work part time on. the farm. Our creameries, butter and cheese factories aye doing this; our cotton mills have shifted to the south, nearer their raw material; and I’m -sending mv small parts out to the villages to be manufactured.

. “There’s a change coming—a mingling of industry and agriculture. Isolation and monotony have driven millions; from the farm to the city; but, under this arrangement, farmers could Jive in the villages, enjoy the benefits of community life, and drive out to their farms for the planting, cultivating, and harvesting. GUTTING DOWN COSTS.

. How is all this to be broiwht about;”’

It will be brought about through tne fact that farmers will have to cut down their operating costs, just as competition forcer! factories to adept '©hour-saving machinery. f arming in the future is going to be organised on a big ©dale, just- as industry is. This new, movement is going to’ be helped by the city fellows, keen and energetic, who know modern machine methods, and once they learn what mucj. is, they make good fa. miens. There is no reason why farming should not be one of the pleasantest and most profitable occupations in the world. I believe it soon will he.”