Community life is also affected by the type of farming which is
prevalent among its people. Modern agriculture is becoming specialized,
and the crops grown are determined both by soil and climate and by the
markets available. Fruit sections are due primarily to the former, while
the regions producing market milk are determined chiefly by the latter
factor. Now various types of farming make distinctly different demands
upon the time of the farmer and so to a considerable extent they
condition his social life. Dairying is probably the most confining sort
of farming, and on the one-man farm there is little opportunity for
getting away. "Haven't missed milking morning or night for six years,"
one dairyman replied to me when asked if he ever had a vacation. The
fruit grower, on the other hand, during the winter can take a few weeks
to go South or visit relatives without injury to his business. In the
South after the crops are "laid by" in midsummer is the season for
camp-meetings, picnics, and "frolicking" in general. Not only does the
fruit grower have more leisure than the dairyman, but population is
denser in a fruit-growing or trucking community and hence the
communities are smaller and more compact. Just what characteristics of
community life may be attributed to these differences in vocation it
would be difficult to say, for so far as I am aware no exact studies
have compared several communities of each type, but that they exercise a
large influence on community customs and the social attitudes of the
people is patent to even a casual observer who passes from a dairy
section to a fruit region, or from the northwestern grain belt to a
region of general farming.[21]
Specialization in agricultural production also affects community life in
that its economic interests are unified both as regards production and
marketing and as the income of most of its people comes from one or two
products, their attention is focused upon them and a greater degree of
solidarity results than where farming is more diversified and farmers
are not so dependent on the sale of one or two crops. Specialization is
chiefly due to advantages which it ensures in marketing, as will be
indicated in the next chapter, and it is because there is less economic
pressure to compel general farmers to market together and that they lack
the solidarity developed by specialization, that cooperative selling
associations have not generally succeeded in a general farming region
when they have attempted to handle various farm products.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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