Changing Technology and the Need for Migratory Farm Labor

Excerpts from the Summary: Changes in mechanization and technology and the changing structure of agriculture are closely interrelated. The technological revolution of farming in the last 20 years has affected the structure of agriculture, and the structure of agriculture has influenced the changes made in technology. The net effect of these two forces will be a tendency for farms to become larger, more mechanized, and more specialized. There will still be family farms in the sense of primary dependence on family labor. But prospects are that the hired labor will make up a larger proportion of the farm labor force. Trendwise, number of both family and hired workers have decreased about in proportion the number of farms. Operators and members of their families who do farmwork decreased more rapidly. Last year, the average number of hired workers rose for the first time since 1950. On an annual basis, the number of family workers has not increased since the immediate postwar year, 1946, and the downward rend continued last year. In future years, numbers of hired workers will go down but less rapidly than the number of family workers.