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Show Farm Mechanization Soosts Production to Record Level OMAHA, NEB. Americans are harvesting 20 million more acres today to-day than they did in 1940, although there are three million fewer people doing it, and on 200.000 fewer fnrms. Fast-growing mechanization of farms is largely responsible for this feat, Joseph A. Hoban, merchandise manager of B. F. Goodrich company, com-pany, told members of Midwest Implement Im-plement Dealers association. He St cited the fact that the nation's trac- f J tor "population" had doubled, from one million to two million, just since 1940. Praising "the way America's farmers and other food producers had come through to ease tragio conditions in many lands," Hoban cited the following estimates on the nation's 1947 exports of foodstuffs: 392 million bushels of wheat, five times the amount exported in 1939; 88 million bushels of corn, compared com-pared to 32 million in 1939, and 328 million pounds of meat products, against 193 million in 1939. The farm market offered "the biggest sales opportunity" for industry in-dustry In 1947, Hoban said, adding that "there is no question that this market is going forward at as great or even greater pace in 1948." Hoban said that all tractors now made are rubber-tired, and that J changing all a farm's rolling stock from steel to rubber tires produced an average saving of 24 working days and 675 gallons of gasoline per year, for each 150 acres worked. |