1950 - Agriculture

Agriculture

Communist Party Leader Liu Shaoqi (Shao-Chi), 50, promulgates an agrarian reform law, saying, "The industrialization of China should be based on the vast market of rural China." But while Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) says China's future lies in mobilizing the peasantry, Liu follows Marxist orthodoxy, insisting that large farms depend on chemical fertilizers, electrification, tractors and other farm machinery, agronomists, and engineers. Most of the nation's budget goes to industrialization, but China's agricultural output nevertheless begins a rapid rise (see 1949; 1952).

U.S. farm prices will rise 28 percent in the next year as the Korean War fuels inflation and boosts food prices.

The average U.S. farm worker produces enough food and fiber for 15.5 people, up from seven in 1900 (see 1963). The percentage of the U.S. available workforce employed on the land falls to 11.6 percent, down from 25 percent in 1933, and 20 percent of farmers will quit the land in the next 12 years (see 1960).

Insects damage $4 billion worth of U.S. crops, consuming more food than is grown in New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania combined.

The boll weevil destroys $750 million worth of U.S. cotton; it has destroyed at least $200 million worth each year since 1909.

More than 75 percent of U.S. farms are electrified, up from 33 percent in 1940.

Moscow claims that the United States has released Colorado potato beetles on fields in East Germany as cold-war tensions mount.

The first calf born of a virgin mother is delivered at the University of Wisconsin. Transplanting of fertilized ova will permit new developments in animal breeding.