how have crop numbers improved w tractor development

Im producing a movie about why folks love their tractors for wv pbs, im interesed in finding some historical resorces on the how crop numbers have gone up as the tractor developes over the past 150 years, anybody got any good stories.
why do you love tractors?
Has anybody out there used horses to farm then got got a tractor? what was that like?
also has any body had any experiance starting a farm?
was it difficult to get a tractor?

A little before my time, but I think the dynamics of the great depression and WWII coming about the same time as tractors and other mechinization came about, and how those issues affected each other is the interesting part. Too poor to afford the machines, then too few people left to be without them as able-bodied went off to war.....

We don't know what that was like any more, the times it happened in.

--->Paul

Can't offer any historical resources.....by crop numbers, do you mean 'yields'? I'm not sure how much the use of tractors contributed to increased yields; more than likely, it was soil conservation and the use of fertlizers, chemicals and hybrid seed, among other things. When I's a kid, most folks saved their own cotton seed to plant 'next' year and planted corn from the corn crib. I came along at the tail-end of the share-cropper/manual labor (human and animal) era. There were VERY few horses in my part of the country, but literally thousands and thousands of mules. I'm about 50 miles North of Memphis, which at one time was the "mule capitol of the world". I can still remember folks plowing straight up and down the hills and the middles washing out knee-deep after a big rain; the top soil around 'here' was often 40 ft deep, but even that couldn't last forever. Some of the older farmers would only begrudgingly use a little fertilizer, which was invariably 'Bulldog sodie'. It was Nitrate of Soda (16-0-0, if I remember correctly); was imported from Chile and had a picture of a bulldog on the bag. My dad bought our first tractor....a tricycle single-front tire Avery.......in 1951; it replaced 2 teams of mules. One team was Bill and Pat; can't remember the others. (My grand-dad's were Bob and Mandy; half brother and sister iron grays). Some 2,4-D was already being used in corn and Toxaphene or DDT (for bugs) in cotton, but I remember very well the first cotton herbicide in the mid-'50s (Karmex). Enough already..........

I've seen numbers about how many people a farmer could feed over the years and its gone from originally just his family to a lot of people but can't put numbers to it. Farm machinery certainly has a lot to do with it but so does seed development, herbicides, farm management. There aren't too many people left in the country that has gone from farming with horses to owning a tractor.

An excellent reference I recommend for your project is a book "Beyond The Furrow" by Hiram M. Drache, Concordia College, Interstate publishers, Danville, IL.
One comment I remember from the book is there was a time during the early part of the last century where certain banks would not loan a farmer money to buy a tractor because they thought it would make him soft and lazy.

In the late 1800s, in the upper midwest, oxen that were no longer needed for pulling loads of logs, the pine forests having been logged off and rapidly converted into farm land, were turned into farm draft animals. Conversion from oxen to horses came a little after that and big powerful horses were used for farm work for many years, finally coming to an end after WWII. The first tractors were steam traction engines that were used to power and pull the great threshing machines and saw mills of that day. J.I.Case and Meinrad Rumely were early pioneers but there were many others. Some of these traction engines were used to pull plows on the prairie soils of the lower midwest with limited success. Rumely designed, built and sold through their dealers a new type of non-steam tractor that they called the "Oil Pull" which was smaller and more adaptable to farm work. John Deere tried to design a smaller tractor they called the Dain model after the engineer who designed it but it was too expensive. They then purchased the Waterloo Boy Tractor factory and marketed that for about $1400. Charles Hart and Charles Parr, two ag engineers, marketed their Hart-Parr tractors, eventually purchasing the Oliver Chilled Plow Company in New York and moved their operation from Janesville, Wis to Charles City, Iowa where everything they produced was eventually sold under the Oliver nameplate. It took one man, however, to convert the farmer from horses to tractors. He had already developed the mass production techniques necessary to convert people from horses to cars and now he did it with tractors as well. His intent was to provide the farmer who owned 60-80 acres with a tool that would remove the drudgery of walking behind a team of horses all day and allow him more time to be with his family. Over 500,000 of these little tractors were produced at about $750 a pop. This caused other tractor manufacturers to compete or go belly up. The net result was a massive conversion from horses to tractors, slowed only by the limitations imposed by WWII, and now, the farmer could get a lot more work done. This meant he could own more land. Farms became progressively larger and larger to the point where less than 5% of the population produces over 95% of the food products as opposed to 50% of the population producing food for themselves and the other 50%. That's right. 100 years ago, 50% of the population lived on farms producing food. Now, less than 5%. That freed up many minds and bodies to do other things. It caused a mass migration from farm to city and instead of constantly thinking about raising food crops, we have reached a point where hardly anyone even thinks about it. We have come to take a plentiful supply of high quality, relatively cheap food for granted. This means more prosperity for everyone and it happened in a span of about 60 years. An advancement in the human cause unequalled anywhere, anytime in history.

Go to the farm bureau web site and look at their "fast facts". It doesn't directly address tractors but does have most of the current USDA ag statistics in an easy to use format.

Before tractors, the corn rows were 42 inches apart to accomodate the width of a horse. This width remained the standard for many years after tractors through force of habit and because the same old horse drawn equipment was used to plant, cut, etc., only now it was pulled by tractors. The main ingredient in acheiving our champion record corn crops of recent years has been to get more corn plants on an acre. This has been accomplished by narrower rows, now down to 30" and less and more precisely placed seed. So, that would be an example of how the tractor contributed to greater yields per acre by simply permitting rows to be narrower.

...when you say enough already.
I found your comments very interesting and would welcome more stories about the changes you've observed.

Probably not directly related, but since you are doing something for WV, I'll relate something my grandmother told me. She was born in 1917 and grew up in rural Upshur County, WV. Her parents raised everything they ate until well into their 70's. My grandmother once commented that beef cattle was the biggest change she saw. When she was young, nobody in the area had beef cattle. They raised pigs, chickens, and milk cows. My great grandfather used a team of work horses until he quit farming due to health around the early 1970's.
I suspect that the prejudice against beef cattle was due to the hilly, forested terrain, where open pasture was at a premium. It was probably more cost effective to focus on the limited pasture land to support milk cows and work horses, hay crops for them, and crops such as corn, wheat, buckwheat, etc. With eight kids, I can see why milk, butter, and eggs might be a better investment portfolio than an occasional steak.

My great great grandfather's book on agriculture from 1867 may be just what you are looking for.

The index is on page V, the yields of corn, which he calls Indian corn, are shown on pages 26, 27.

In the book he speaks of hiring up to 54 workers at a time, if I recall correctly. I expect that was harvest labor and before the reaper came about.

Folsom Dorsett was born in Maine and farmed there during his youth. He eventually married, had a family, and lived in Sangamon County and Tazewell County, Illinois before finally moving to young Chicago around 1850. By that time he had farmed 30 years. One source says he introduced silos to the west, meaning west of the New England states.

In 1867 he patented a hay and grain drying device, basically a ventilation system. http://goo.gl/xTJWl He held a patent on an improved boot jack, and also a co-patent on a pipe coating to prevent corrosion.

He operated a store in Chicago and traded in produce and commodities, i.e. eggs, butter, milk, cheese, etc. Many store ads including prize monies for exhibitions can be found for his business.

Not that it matters at all, but he and his family were acquainted with Lincoln. Family tradition tells that he was appointed by Lincoln to head a new Agriculture Department for the Government. Lincoln was killed before he took office and not liking Johnson he refused to serve. I find no historical written evidence that there is any truth to the story however. My grandmothers older sisters attended a ball in Chicago in honor of Grant, so the family was connected politically.

Sorry if I ramble as I'm a bit proud of him and his family. Mainly I suppose because he is one ancestor (and family) that I can find so many interesting stories and history about.

With snow falling and cold set in, perhaps a nice ag book of olde would make for some nice winter reading.
Dorsetts Treatise on Agriculture

Another thought--If you have access through your library or otherwise a subscription for Ancestry.com they have the full Kansas Agriculture Census results from 100 years ago.

For my home area I have downloaded some of them, the last being from 1925. At that time there were only a few tractors listed in the township. Those that did have one often had more than one.

A person might be able to look at the preceding years and than the years after to see how yields increased. The crops would be mainly wheat however. Though some corn etc. was grown it was simply too dry to get an accurate yield picture in my opinion.

No doubt farming with a tractor increased productivity allowing more timely control for growing weeds thus saving moisture.

I think the ref to indian corn is because almost all grains were called corn in europe way back.

"The old four-letter Anglo-Saxon word "corn" means grain of any kind, and except in the United States it does not refer specifically to Indian corn, Zea mays. The American Indian word "maize," however, is understood the world around, and even Americans are again learning to use it."

Thanks, I see that he did have a section for broom corn also.

While I was growing up the grain sorghum milo was most often referred to as maize or milo maize.

I really think we should all have learned a little Latin in school as so many words have their root in it, and for plants and animals almost a must.

I dident read the below posts, but wouldent better seed and technology also help with better crop numbers and yeilds also?

From what I have seen on my travels in America the Amish seem to grow as good crops as anyone and without tractors.All the above points have some part in the use of tractors to help increase yields, the main one being getting more seeds per acre, but surely the biggest impact the tractor had was nothing to do with extra yield but in fact more to do with the extra amount one man could grow on his own with a tractor as opposed to any older method.
Just my thoughts....Sam

Thanks so much to all of you,

Some farmers do a better job than the next one. I can show you some amish farms the crops are so poor if it wasnt for outside work they couldnt survive.