Sunday, October 22, 2017

Changes in Agriculture

We got up to the Seward County Historical Museum in Goehner this afternoon and got the "folding Walking A" turned over to them. The picture shows it in its extended "working" position but its folding makes it very compact. The fellow shown with me is whom we filled in papers for the gift. He was not familiar with the "tool" having grown up as a city kid in Superior, NE. I will provided them detailed information of its usage back in the early days of farm crops subsidies. It was used to measure the size of fields before the days of the land being photographed which enabled fields to be accurately measured with a Planimeter. This was back in the 1930's and '40's when farmers were provided subsidies for reducing the number of acres they planted to certain crops. It was thought that limiting the acres of production would increase the price that the crop would bring. It was commonly called "a program that paid farmers for not farming" which was an over simplification of commodity control.
We came back to Seward on Alvo Rd. which is 1 mile south of the highway. It took us past the Briggs Feedlot where we were amazed at the enormous silo that had been filled recently. There were many more lots of cattle on feed beyond what are shown in the picture. We saw several combines at work with this one harvesting soy beans. All reports are that this has been an excellent crop year with even dry land crops setting record yields. We have come full circle from the Walking A days of limiting production to feeding the world if NAFTA programs stay in tact. 

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