U.S. farm economics 11

Thus far in this series we have set the historical context of our family’s life in Nebraska, beginning with World War I (1914–1918) and its skyrocketing prices for crops, followed by a post-War farm economy collapse through the 1920s and the Great Depression, which was made worse by severe drought and clouds of dust during the dirty ’30s.

We then located our specific ancestors in their historical contexts, weaving our family history into the fabric of national and world history, with Peter D settling his prairie farm bought from the railroad and homesteaded in the final decades of the nineteenth century, Peter P acquiring substantial amounts of farmland both before the prosperous days of World War I and even during the economic collapse that followed, and Grandpa Chris establishing his own farm during the tough times of the late 1920s, just before the worldwide economic collapse of the Depression.

Moving from the general to the particular, we first explored the types of farming that characterized Nebraska as a whole and our family’s specific area within the state. We then discussed how Peter P and Grandpa acquired their farmland through gift and purchase as well as how much per acre Peter D, Peter P, and Grandpa were likely to have paid. We also took time to explore Grandpa’s financing from the  Federal Land Bank. We will return to that governmental agency momentarily, but first we will learn dig deeper into the question of the type of land that our ancestors acquired and how those acquisitions likely shaped the farming that they did.

1. Growing Conditions

A few posts back we viewed Nebraska in terms of nine different types of farming regions (here) as specified in a 1930 bulletin titled Types of Farming in Nebraska (Hedges and Elliott 1930). There we located York County in area 3, the Southern Cash Grain and Livestock Area, as shown in the map below.

A Experiment Station bulletin on the same subject from eleven years earlier (Spafford 1919) offers a slightly different configuration, but the general picture of farming in Nebraska remains approximately the same.

As Spafford explains, “The boundaries of type areas in Nebraska are to a large extent determined by heat, rainfall, and soil” (1919, 58). We all are aware that western Nebraska is much sandier (thus less fertile) than the eastern part of the state, and it should come as no surprise that the southern counties are, on average, warmer and have more warm growing days than the northern part of the state.

What many may not realize is how much rainfall amounts vary across the state. In fact, as the map below makes clear, the eastern edge of Nebraska receives twice as much rain as the western central part of the Panhandle (figure 23 from Hedges and Elliott 1930, 42).

York County, located more east than west, is in the 28–29 inches band. Of course, this precipitation map is from 1930 (remember that year!), so it may not reflect current rainfall averages with complete accuracy.

At any rate, the combination of York County’s predominant soil type (silt loam and silty clay loam; see United States Department of Agriculture 1977, 3), position in the southern half of the state, and average rainfall, the area is ideally suited for raising a variety of grains and engaging in a particular type of farming.

2. Typical Farming Practices

The numbers on the second (1919) map above are significant, for they signal the relative distribution of the main crops in the area. York County is located in the Thayer area (which includes Nebraska counties Clay, Butler, Fillmore, Hamilton, Jefferson, Nuckolls, Polk, Saline, Seward, Thayer, and York and Kansas counties Clay, Marshall, Republic, and Washington Counties in Kansas; Spafford 1919, 60), so the key numbers are 28, 15, and 57. These numbers indicate that 28 percent of crops in this area in 1909 were winter crops (wheat), 15 percent spring crops (mainly oats), and 57 percent summer crops (corn).

In other words, even in 1919 the farmers of this area raised twice as much corn as wheat. If, as noted in the previous post with the wheat-related photographs, Peter P was primarily a wheat farmer, then he was adopting an approach different from most other farmers in the area. The fact that Peter P was able to expand his holdings throughout this twenty-five-year period, much of it characterized by one economic challenge after another, may hint that his approach was more profitable and stable than the usual farming practices of the area.

The 1919 bulletin offers numerous tables recording what an average farm in each area of Nebraska did. The numbers for Thayer (and thus York County) are interesting (all figures are for 1909, and the references at the end refer to Stafford 1919):

• The average farm cultivated 59.3 acres of corn and averaged 18.2 bushels per acre, for total corn yield per farm of 1,079 bushels (table 5 on 64).
• The typical farm cultivated 30.2 acres of winter wheat (average of 0.3 acres of spring wheat) and averaged 15.7 bushels per acre, for total wheat output of 480 bushels of wheat per farm (table 7 on 65).
• The average Thayer farm devoted 15.3 acres acres to raising oats and had average yields of 24.0 bushels per acres, for a total crop of 368 bushels per farm (table 8 on 66).
• Thayer farms also raised and harvested alfalfa (6.18 acres average) and wild hay (7.2 acres) (table 13 on 68 and table 15 on 69).
• According to the Spafford report, the typical farm had 35.4 apple trees; that sounds like a large number, but that is what he reports (table 16 on 70).
• The raising of rye, barley, potatoes, millet, timothy, and clover were negligible in this area.

The cultivation of crops formed the greater part of a farm’s income; how the various Nebraska areas fared in comparison to one another is laid out in the table below.

The Harvest Value Per Farm of All Crops Grown on Crop Land in 1909 (after table 17 on 71)

	Value of All         Crops Grown on Crop Land, 1909	Percent from  Grains, Vegetables,  Fruits, etc.	Value of Crops       Per Acre of Crop Land
Northwest to North Central
High Plains	$744	61	$7.45
West Sand Hills	$732	44	$3.95
East Sand Hills	$911	68	$6.00
Boyd	$1,185	71	$6.50
Southwest to Northeast
Chase	$1,004	86	$7.50
Buffalo	$1,582	81	$11.45
Custer	$1,544	82	$10.65
Wayne	$1,939	87	$13.70
Southwest to Northeast
Hitchcock	$1,261	86	$6.15
Harlan	$1,199	83	$8.05
Thayer	$1,718	88	$13.80
Cass	$1,612	88	$13.80

Note that Thayer (i.e., York and its surroundings) was tied for the top income-per-acre. Clearly our ancestors chose wisely when they decided to settle in this area.

In addition to crops, farmers raised various kinds of livestock. The following figures reflect a 1909–1910 time frame.

• The average farm had an average of 13.7 cattle, 4.3 of which were dairy cows (table 25 on 77 and table 23 on 76).
• The average farmer in the area had 7.2 horses and mules, which is no surprise, in light of their dependence on horses and mules to pull wagons, buggies, and farm implements, as well as for use with mills and the like (table 27 on 78).
• The typical Thayer farm had 13.6 mature hogs at any given point and sold or slaughtered 21.8 during a twelve-month period (table 28 on 78).
• Thayer farms also raised and kept chickens, on average 142 of them. These chickens produced 434 dozen eggs per year, 285 dozen to be sold, 126 dozen consumed by the farm family, and 23 dozen used for setting (table 29 on 79).

Farmers kept livestock for several reasons: to help with the labor of farming, to feed the family, and to generate income to be used to buy the things that could not be raised or made. A typical farmer in the Thayer area enjoyed the following average receipts from livestock raising (Spafford 1919, table 33 on 81):

receipts from sale of animals	$684
value of animals slaughtered	$42
value of diary products	$73
value of poultry and eggs produced	$129
value of wool produced	$1
TOTAL	$929

In other words, a typical farm generated roughly 65 percent of its income from crop cultivation and the remaining 35 percent from large and small livestock. The annual average income for the Thayer area in 1909 totaled $2,647. The average farm in the York County area had a per-acre price of $78 in 1909 and $91 in 1910 (a one-year increase of 16.7 percent). Therefore, a 160-acre farm would have cost between $12,480 and $14,560. Even if a farmer could have devoted every penny of income to paying off his farm, it would have taken 5.5 years, which was still shorter than the typical mortgage length in those pre–Federal Land Bank days.

Of course, no one could do direct all income to paying off a loan—other supplies had to be bought—so the typical farmer was destined to renew the land mortgage at least once, if not multiple times. During all this time Peter P expanded his holdings significantly, which raises the question of how he was able to do so. For fun we will look at wheat and corn prices during the high point of World War I, then play a little with Peter P’s acreage and his reputation as primarily a wheat farmer to see how this might shed some light on the source of his obvious success.

Sources Cited

Hedges, Harold, and F. F. Elliott. 1930. Types of Farming in Nebraska. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 244. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 80 pages.

Spafford, R. R. 1919. Farm Types in Nebraska, as Determined by Climatic, Soil, and Economic Factors. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 15. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here.

United States Department of Agriculture. 1977. Soil Survey of York County, Nebraska. Soil Conservation Service, in cooperation with the the University of Nebraska Conservation and Survey Division. Available online here.