Word: labor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...farmer now makes up only 7% of the nation's labor force, but he has more than compensated for his dwindling numbers. Advances in crop biology, fertilizers and the like have helped. But, in basic terms, it is the powerful, ingenious array of new machinery (see color pages) that has enabled the American farmer to harvest an un dreamed-of abundance...
...hour of farm labor produces more than six times as much as it did in 1920. Per-acre crop production is up by 80%. Output per breeding animal has doubled. In the 1960s alone, productivity of the average farm worker has increased by 6% a year v. only 3% for other workers. Total farm production, the Agriculture Department estimated last week, will set a new record this year (one result being lower grain prices on the nation's commodities market). With the average farm laborer producing enough food and fiber for 39 people, the American farmer not only overfeeds...
While machinery has eliminated plenty of agricultural jobs, sometimes it works the other way around, with labor shortages causing "forced mechanization." In the case of tomatoes, field workers, turning from arduous stoop work to higher-paying jobs in town, were becoming scarce even before the first mechanical tomato harvester appeared on the market in 1960. At Woodland, Calif., Farmer Bernell Harlan, 60, is part owner of a pair of $22,000 tomato harvesters, goes so far as to credit the machine with "saving the tomato industry for California...
...berry to find one suitable for machine picking. The impact of mechanization is such, predicts International Harvester Economist Dr. L. S. Fife, that crops failing to lend themselves to mechanization "will cease to exist as common commodities. They will become delicacies obtainable only at high cost through scarce hand labor...
...Pick Your Pit." Robens' resignation, if it goes through as expected, will mark the end of a relatively bright era in one of Britain's most beclouded industries. A loud Lancashire socialist with a promising future in the Labor Party when Tory Macmillan chose him for the chairmanship, Alf Robens took the job only, or so he said, because he did not want it to go to "Lord Montgomery or someone like that." For all his socialist background, Robens was made a baron in 1961, and soon showed a gifted eye for profit. By closing down unprofitable collieries...