Local Issue; 24; Death of a Small Farm

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . As they like the manager of managerial ability to handle such a unit, felt that they wanted to try some other type of occupation, some other way of earning a living.

Yes, we talk to a family in Southeastern Nebraska, which is leaving the farm. It's the Glen Bramer family. Their son, John, has no intention of staying on the farm, and this is the way he puts it. Well, the farm is a good life, it's got all of its advantages and disadvantages, but it isn't dependable enough. It's a risk. It's a gamble. If you like to gamble, you're in good shape, but that isn't for me. I'd rather have a job where I can know what I'm going to get and know what I'm going to make. And I think by going to the teaching profession, this is pretty well guaranteed. That's the way John talks about not staying on the farm, and you have to listen to his father to get more about the feeling that this kind of an uprooting causes. Glen, how long have you been on the farm here? It has to be the 20th year, we started here in 1947, and then we've all been here until now.

Yes. How has what sort of a farm is this, what's the size of it? There's 400 acres in this place where we live, and then I rent 120, and one farm is 260 and another one that I'm on. Now that we're at your working with 700 acres or a bit more. You have to specialize in one area, haven't you? Well, pretty much, we've always fed a lot of cattle, that's been a feed grain operation, bringing all the grain we've put back in the cattle, lives in them. Well, is this a rescue business? I suppose it's the biggest gamble in the world, I think, feeding cattle along with farm here. I would say that, and it was the risk being in the case of cattle fluctuating market. Yes. On a few instances where you've bought cattle, you know, when they would go up and then you buy them and they go down, you never know when you buy cattle, they're too high, the

day you sell them, and you know. Then, of course, in this part of the country, there's always a fashion of the weather, isn't it? Yes. Hard crops. Oh, this isn't probably the best land in the country, and I don't know how many years. Last year, this was declared a disaster area, and I remember 56 was a drought and so on down the line. Some years, you just can make back one year once you lost a year before. Well, even this year, it looked bad for a while, didn't it? Yes. Up until two weeks ago, they were talking about calling this a disaster area, you know, it was starting to be in the program, and the terrain has really taken the pressure off of grass, and everything looks good right now. But, somewhere before then, you and Ruth started thinking about leaving the farm, didn't you?

Yes. I don't know. It's often thought I, when we were talking about 20 years, I thought I could have done anything for 20 years, and probably been better off today than I am by far, I mean, it's been a good life, you know, but now you do plan to leave, are you better about starting plans? No. No. It's been a good life, we had. Now, there's a lot of things we hate to leave, it's been, you know, if you live in the community for 20 years, there's a lot of things that you just don't walk away from without some regrets. There's the wife story to be told here too. I heard about city wives working, but not so much about wives in the country working. In our work with foreign people and record keeping to the university, we quite often find that when the family summarizes its ears business, that the husband has been working for nothing while the net income that the family has to live on has been contributed by the earnings

of the wife. That isn't exactly the way it is with Ruth Braemer, but partly so, this is the way she tells it. In 1961, we sort of looked at the future a little bit and decided that if we wanted to send our children to college, we had that I had better get in the act too and help with our uncertain income, so I had always wanted to teach, so I enrolled at the Proustate College in 1961 in summer school and I went to summer school and night classes and when I had, I think it's 42 hours, I could teach in a rural school, so then I began teaching in 1962 and then I continued night classes and summer school until I finally got where I was going. Ruth, how do you feel about leaving the farm? Well, it sort of with mixed feelings, in a way, I'll be glad we're going to get away

from all the worry and uncertainty of it that we've had a lot of fun on the farm, we've enjoyed it, and I think, once the farmer, always the farmer, I think I'll always like the smell of fresh hay, fresh morn hay, and it's not so easy to just pull up and go. That's four people, one family, out of about 750,000 people a year who leave the farm on a national basis. Nationally also there are about three million farm units. Of these about two million are experiencing some economic problems. Here in Nebraska, we lost about 10,000 units in the past five years. That would be at the rate of five a day, in 1964 it was estimated that 35% of the Nebraska farms were making $3,000 or less and another 20% were making far less than their city cousins.

The rural community is undergoing substantial changes too, as is the farm population. As all weather roads have been built and as farms have become fewer and larger, we find that the small town is losing business. Yes we visited such a town in South Eastern Nebraska and we found a natural and rather admirable reluctance to give up. We are in Salem, Nebraska, a town which 25 years ago had some 500 residents and which today has shrunk to about 240. Salem is an old and historical town, settled soon after the territorial opening of this country and it grew up to provide the kinds of services, the many farmers who homesteaded here needed.

The services grew and then started to disappear some years ago. This was the general store, a fine general store and today it is a garage. This is the Salem Bank owned and operated by Mr. Harry Houston. Mr. Houston has been in this bank for 42 years. So what services remain in Salem now? Well of course we have the bank, post office, barbershop, lumber yard, garage and we have a meat processing plant here in two cafes. How about schools and also an elevator? Yes. How about schools? Well we have an eighth grade school now. One time we had high school and about three years ago we discontinued the high school. How many teachers are left?

Three. And how many did you have before? We have eight. Harry religion has always been important in rural areas and in this part of the country. How many churches do you have? We have two. Well. Did you have more before? One time I think there was six possibly seven churches in town. And another thing that has been important in this part of the country has been transportation. We followed the railroads as we settled. Do you have railroads service? Yes. But it's freight service only. Did you have passenger service? We did at one time. We had six passenger trains through here. And now you have none? No. You have a depot? No. Well. Harry, are young people operating the services that remain in Salem? No. Most of the older people. What happens when the older people retire? Well, it's hard to tell. Possibly someone will come along, but they might not.

Otherwise, Salem may continue to decline. Well, possibly so, yes. We can feel in nostalgia for a way of life that is disappearing from the small farm and the small town. But there is a hard economic fact here, also. The question of what happens to these people who leave the farm and the small town? Some older farm people, when they become eligible for Social Security, stay on the farm. Randolph the land and continue to live on the farm that they know and love. Others leave the farm and move to town and build a new house that they've wanted all these years. But those are the older ones. The young ones leave and enter the urban labor market, trained or otherwise. Like many states, Nebraska has some help for these young men. This is the Nebraska Vocational Technical School at Milford, and we are talking to its director, Mr. Lowell Welch.

Do the young men from the farm and rural areas actually come to this school? Do your figures indicate they come here? Over half of our enrollment comes directly from farms and ranches. And of course, about 75 to 80% of the entire enrollment comes from the farm ranches in small or smaller villages in the state. Is there continuing farm support for this school? Yes, we've always had the support of farm organizations. I think this was shown in the school first started the attempts to close farm organizations and realize the need of training for the young people and have been very instrumental in keeping this school alive and keeping it developed. Obviously, we're in the electronic data computing center. What other areas do you offer training in? Actually, we offer training in 11 different departments here at the school.

Besides the electronic data processing, we have excellent departments in drafting. In this area, the students may specialize in civil technology that's highway construction and surveying, or they may go into production draft. In the electoral electronic department, they may take training in either the area of electrical maintenance, or in servicing different equipment, communication equipment, or they may, if they have the ability and potential as technicians, they may specialize as technicians either like school or electronic technicians. There are conditioning departments, they may start out, and if they care to go as far as finance servicemen, they may do this, after they finish here, then where do they go? Since September of this year up until June, we've had over 2,300 job opportunities for

the graduates, graduating about 200 this June. This number, about 1,100, we're in Nebraska, and about 1,200 out of the state, and from about 25 different states, in spite of the number that we have out of state, over 80% of our graduates stay in Nebraska. Yes, they're staying. Taking jobs somewhere. Many of them in the regional town, which you're developing, and in these towns, you sense none of the plaguing doubt you hear in the smaller towns. For example, listen to the optimism of Dick Good, the Chamber of Commerce manager at Grand Island, Nebraska. Our town has a population of more than 30,000 people. There are only a few towns of this size, and larger in the entire Great Plains area. It's no secret that the larger towns have the advantage in attracting industry, particularly those having major employment requirements.

We in Grand Island are real fortunate to have the New Holland plant, which employs over 600 persons. The swifting company, packing plant, the work force is more than a hundred. And of course, the CornSQL ordinance plant employs about 3,300. If people have basic education, as well as specialized vocational training, there are opportunities for those who leave the farm to seek non-farm type employment. While there is a story about these people who leave the farm and go to the city, that is not our story. Our story is about what is happening back on the farm. Ever what has happened to the small farm? The small family farm is being replaced by a larger family farm, and it's important to note that it's still a family farm. The successful farm of today involves not only more land, but also sufficient income, sufficient capital to use all of the benefits of modern agricultural technology. The successful farmer of today,

as he raises his crops, has fertilized, mechanized, hybridized, harmonized, immunized, sprayed, and irrigated his crops and livestock. And of course, some people would also say that he has been subsidized. And it is true that the price supports that he has had since the World War II days have provided the income security that makes it possible for him to invest in the modern technology and produce the agricultural miracle with which we're all familiar. The farm of today, while it's still a family-operated unit, involves a large investment, ranging now from $50,000 up to as much as $500,000. There are many important factors in today's complex farm technology. Scientific inquiry contributes greatly in improving methods of farm practice, among them the regular testing of soil for fertility, depending on the crop. Fertilizer is now manufactured instead

of being produced only on the farm. Modern techniques are used for the control of weeds, disease, and insect infestations. One combine, together with a few trucks and a small crew of men, can harvest a wheat that used to require a large crew and many, many days of work. Labor costs are less, whether hazards are minimized, and yields are increased. Machinery can be very efficient. One multiple unit plough with a big tractor can tell a field in a fraction of the time it used to take. This is big business. And while there is land involved, lots of it, and machinery worth lots of money, we still get back to the people who run these farms. You don't put a half a million dollar investment in the hands of an on-trained person. No, the untrained operator would not be able to get the kind of

capital that it takes to operate a modern farm of today. To provide this training is what we have the agricultural colleges for. Yes, Dean Elvin-Prolick of the Agriculture and Home Economics College of the University of Nebraska. Talks about that training very well. Is there specialized training for special kinds of agricultural units? Yes, there is. For the man who's going to be a rancher, for example, he will major in range management or ranch management. For the man who's going to be a poultry farmer, we have a different type of training. For the one who's going to be a grain farmer or a dairy farmer, still different kinds of training. Is there any broad subjects such as business that they all may need? Yes, businesses required, of course, for all of these operations. What we think today, however, is that a man should take four years of technical training, take some of the prerequisites, get himself prepared for further training after he gets the baccalaureate degree so that he would then follow by getting a master

of business administration, a total of about five years of college training. Now we've come quite a ways in our story, all the way from 160 acres homesteaded by a pioneer to a modern college trained agricultural expert for the farm who may even have a master's degree in business. And of course, all of this is applied on the farm. Ever, we're talking about the mobile farmer. And although this may be a bit advanced, even for 1967, I literally came down on a farm, such as the kind we're talking about not too long ago. Not too long ago that helicopter was a curiosity. We saw on television or in the newsreels.

And we would not pretend that today it is a common piece of machinery found around the American farm, yet it is used and other equally complicated machinery. On such farms as this one, the Carol Beacher farm, north of Columbus, Nebraska, where daring is the specialization. Of course, it could be cattle feeding, poultry, grain raising, or fruit. Once more ever, we have told a story. This time, a technological one. But again, we should get back to the people, kind of people. Are these persons' tenet farmers for a huge corporate, spalling monster? No. The family operated, business enterprise is still a main form of doing business in American agriculture. The corporation farm is not increasing in numbers, but exist primarily

in specialized areas. True, there are family corporations that are set up in order to provide for the transfer of farm from one generation to another. But corporation farming is not the way American agricultural production takes place. Yes, there is such a farm located not too far from the Braemer farm, the people we talked about earlier who are leaving. This one is called the Twin Oaks Farm. It's in Southeastern Nebraska, not far from Humboldt. There we talked to the father and one of his sons, the son Walter, because he was a young man, interested in me, and I asked him if he thought this was going to be fun. Anything's fun that you try and make fun. I enjoy farming, and if you enjoy something, it's bound to be fun. You can find fun and humor as I say in most anything. And Walter, where do you intend to go from here? Well, the sky is women. And as long as we can keep up, as well as my father has, if I can continue as well as he is, it's just hard to say what?

The potential would be. Ever if the father told a story of growth and specialization, I ask him to describe that growth. Back in 1942, and we got married, we were renting it from my father, and we had about $150 between us when we began farming. In 1948, my father sold us the farm, which I've always been very grateful for, because too many times it's carried on in the father's name until the children are too old to do anything with it. In 1948, we did buy the home place, and in 1961, we bought an additional 160 acres. In 1963, we bought another 100 acres, and 1966, we purchased the farm we are now on. So you ended up with a relatively large farm for this part of the country. Some 700 acres or more. And did you do something else, though, Jim, beyond just farm this land? Did you specialize?

Yes, you might say we did. In 1948, we had the home place paid off, and I didn't feel it was wise for a man of my age to be putting money, investing in something other than my own occupation. So we did go into the great-aid dairy business, and we have continued with that ever since. Now let's take one more step forward. How large a family do you have? We have five children, two girls, and three boys. And what about those boys? What do they plan? They want very much to stand on the farm, and by doing what we are doing or did do, in purchasing this farm and working it up, their possibilities of staying on the farm become greater. Naturally, they want to stay where we wouldn't be doing this. There has been much melancholy over the disappearance of the small farm. There has been concern over the social and economic implications of the Exodus from rural America. Yet there was also melancholy when the working horse disappeared from the farm. And though this simile may be an oversimplification,

it does in a way symbolize our story, a shiny, powerful tractor replaced that horse. And that tractor was capable of doing more work over many more acres than old oven could ever expect to. That work absorbing tractor, in addition to social and economic factors, wrote the obituary to the small farm. But they also wrote the prophecy to the large, prosperous, specialized farm of the future. This is MET, the National Educational Television Network.