OCR Text |
Show REA Setup Gives Impetus To Farm Electrification Half of all United States farms have been electrified since the REA program was started. In announcing the basic allotments allot-ments for REA loans In the states, the department of agriculture compared com-pared the number of unelectrlfled farms In each state with the total number of farms in the state to give the percentage of unelectrlfled farms. The eight states having the highest proportion of electrified farms were Connecticut with 98.5 per cent, followed by Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington, Wash-ington, New York, Idaho and Oregon, Ore-gon, all of which were more than 92 per cent electrified. At the other end of the list were North Dakota, with only a little more than 15 per cent of the farms electrified, preceded by South Dakota, Da-kota, Mississippi. Nebraska, Tennessee, Ten-nessee, New Mexico, Montana aad Kansas, which had nearly 42 per cent electrified. The other 32 states ranged between be-tween the 42 per cent and 92 per cent limits. For the country as a whole, the July, 1947, figures show 61 per cent of all farms electrified as compared with 54.3 per cent a year earlier. Nearly 400,000 farms were electrified during the 1947 fiscal fis-cal year, the largest increase on record for any year since the program pro-gram started. In 1935 less than 11 per cent of U. S. farms had electric service. |