OCR Text |
Show Fewer Tenant Farms More and more farmers have become be-come land owners in recent years and fewer have stayed on the land as tenant operators, the U. F department de-partment of arrriculture reports. A little more than a fourth of the nation's farms were tenant-operated in 1947, according to the January Janu-ary 1947 enumerative survey of the bureau of agricultural economics, based on a sample of about 15,000 farm interviews. The survey found that 26.9 per cent of the farms were farmed by tenants last year. This figure compares with 31.7 per cent tenancy in 1945 as shown by the 1945 census of agriculture and with the peak of 42.4 per cent in 1930. The proportion of tenancy has fallen fall-en each year since the peak, the decline being especially sharp during dur-ing the war. Many former tenants have not returned to farming since tha end of the war. The reason says the bureau, probably include the continued chance for work elsewhere else-where and the fact that fewer farmers are needed as technological technologi-cal improvements are made in agriculture. |