Not so very long ago, a wheat grower in
Arlington spent 60 days plowing his 4,000-acre
spread. In Douglas county, it tix.k three acres of
pasture to support one ewe, anJ all of the snap
beans in the state were picked by hand.
Things have changed.
Today, the Arlington wheat farmer can com
plete his plowing in two weeks. One acre of im
proved pasture is supporting three ewes, and a
mechanical bean picker is doing the work of 250
laborers.
It's all a rart of the big change in agriculture,
harnessing test tubes, computers and machinery to
produce more bushels per dollar a change that is
puttingOrcgon farm products into everything from
breakfast foods to pi::a dinners.
"The change in agriculture is still accelerat
ing," says Walter Lcth, State Director of Agricul
ture, "and we see no reason why it should slow
down."
Agriculture is Oregon's second largest indus
try, with cash receipts of $524 million in 1967.
One out of four Oregonians owes his job to agri
culture, and farmers in the state have invested over
$2.5 billion in their businesses.
Oregon's bountiful lands have made food
processing the state's second largest manufacturing
industry. It now employs 23,500, markets about 50
different foods and contributes more than $300
million to the state's economy each year. (One
out of eight of the nation's frozen food packages
comes from Oregon.)
Food processing also has created Oregon's
most valued farm hand the food technologist.
Campus researchers have helped make Oregon
products taste better, keep longer and go into
more shopping bags each year. It was an Oregon
State staff member who assisted formation of Ore
gon Freeze Dry Foods five years ago. Today the
Albany plant has become the world's largest of its
type, with annual sales of $8 million.
Some research is for the berries. Like at the
Foamat Food Corp. plant at Corvallis, where
through a new process developed by U.S. Depart
ment of Agriculture scientists, a box of raspberries
is reduced to a spoonful of tasty crystals for use in
cake mixes, dry cereals and other foods. And the
same treatment is being applied to other Oregon
berries, fruits and vegetables.
Oregon farmers are producing more food than
ever before on fewer but larger farms. Farms have
decreased by 21,300 in the last 20 years to a current
figure of 41,500 average farm acreage is up from
335 acres in 1950 to 504 acres. Machines are replac
ing men, so much so that the average annual em
ployment in agriculture has decreased 31 in the
last 20 years.
With sophisticated machinery, a farmer today
can provide enough food for 40 people whereas he
used to produce only enough for 15.
"No industry has gone as far as agriculture in
terms of better management and higher produc
tion," says Allen P.Wheeler, Master of the Oregon
State Grange. Fred A. Phillips, first vice-president,
Oregon Cattlemen's Association, said, "We keep
trying for a little more efficiency. We've got to grow
what people want; and what they want is high
quality meat at as low cost as they can get it."
Machines are picking hops, husking corn, and
sorting cherries. Fifteen years ago in Madras, it took
two men four hours to feed 500 head of cattle,
today, in less time they feed five times that number.
A wheat grower today has six men on his harvest
payroll, one quarter the number he needed in 1945.
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Computers are programming high protein diets for
fecdlot cattle and storing breeding records of pure
bred I lerefords.
Environmental control is another part of the
technological revolution. According to Dr. G. Bur
ton Wood, director of Oregon State University'
Agricultural Experiment Station, "Today, wc arc
developing the ability to control and manipulate
change." As a result, controlled atmospheric storage
at Hood River keeps apples fresh nine monds after
they were picked.
Irrigation in Umatilla County has doubled
wheat yields. The introduction of bees has ex
panded alfalfa seed crops. And throughout the
state, the test tube has replaced the manure spreader
as the chief fertilizer distributor.
"Twenty years ago, I didn't use an ounce of
fertilizer on my fields," says one farmer. "Last year,
I spent $12,000 on it."
The high price for soil enrichment poinU up
one uncomfortable fact of life for today's Oregon
farmer: farming today costs money, and lots of it.
Land costs are moving up. So are taxes and equip
ment prices. A tractor that cost $6,100 two decades
ago now carries a price tag three times that amount.
All in all, it takes 64 percent more cash to operate
a farm than it did 10 years ago. In short, as Allen
Wheeler sees it, money is the farmer's biggest
problem.
"He's having to pay higher costs, and yet he's
not getting paid any more for his product," Wheeler
says. Less, in some cases. One wheat farmer recalls
that 20 years ago he got $2.60 a bushel for his crop.
This year he got $1.40.
And no technologist has provided the farmer
with an umbrella that safeguards him from the
vagaries of weather. 1968, for example, dealt out
drouth; floods and freezes that pared Oregon'scrop
value of production by almost 9 and in some
cases like apples resulted in a 34 drop over
previous years.
But more than weather, it's the price squeeze
that is forcing farmers off their lands. Farmers are
selling out at the rate of about 1,100 a year, ind,
when farm families leave, the rural communities
suffer.
So with all the advances in technology, the
Oregon farmer still maintains a worried watch over
the weather and hopes for a bountiful crop plus a
decent price to enable him to start the whole cycle
over again next year. And somehow he maintains
an optimism born of a profession in which nature
is both benefactor and adversary.
Thus change is accepted, nurtured and wel
comed. As Marion T. Weatherford, wheat grower,
cattle rancher and past president of Oregon's Agri
Business Council, says:
"What's going on in agriculture is the most
exciting thing that ever happened, and we're just
on the threshold of change,"
We're part of the Big Change. Like the
farmer, we rely on the technologist to im
prove our product and to expand its markets.
We don't depend on weather for a crop, but
we must be prepared to cope with its vagar
ies. And in order to continually market a bet
ter product, we too must be ever conscious
of the rising costs of technological talents
and equipment.
Pacific Northwest Bell
Put ! NitimwMt 10 Syrtra
Tburday. March IJ. 1969