May 27, 2002

In honor of Memorial Day, we salute our war veterans for their service to our country in peacetime and wartime.

Agriculture and America’s farmers, as well as Deere & Company, also played an important role in the war effort.

John Deere published a "Special Edition Dedicated to the American Farmer" of The Furrow in 1943 that featured "America’s No. 1 War Worker: What He Does…How He Does It…And Why." Its cover artwork showcased an older bib-overall-clad farmer with U.S. flag flying in the background.

However, the editorial admits the job of covering the farmer is far too much to fit into one issue of The Furrow. "Many men, working many months, could not put together in detail the whole story about the farmer’s contribution to our war effort. But something of the story can be told in broad outline in this special issue of THE FURROW.

"And so this issue is sincerely dedicated to identifying America’s No. 1 war worker…to featuring at least a small measure of his contribution to Victory…to noting the principal means by which the farmer does his job…and to inquiring briefly into the reasons why he pitches in so usefully."

Statistics in the story claim there are 6 million farms with about 30 million farmers if you count the women, children and older men who must work the fields while young men are off fighting the war. "One state reports that two to three of every ten of its farm women are now working in the fields."

"If the farmer weren’t progressive, we’d have lost the war by this time. Not so many years ago 90 per cent of all us Americans worked on farms. The world over, the figure is still close to 70 per cent — right now in 1943. But in America, it is only about 25 per cent. And that 25 per cent is doing the job, not just for America but for a large part of the world.

"This is the No. 1 reason why America is winning the war: because we have been able to release so many people for fighting front and the factories while we keep the farms going full tilt."

"Just how many million farm boys there are in our armed forces is a military secret. But there are a lot of them. The Navy is full of kids from the midwest and the plains states who didn’t know how to row a boat when they got to boot camp. But they make good sailors. It’s a shorter step to a tank from a tractor than from most other jobs. Wars aren’t fought indoors. Those farm boys are swell soldiers. Ask any general."

"A list of the things the farmer does for America’s war effort would include a thousand miracles — miracles of production and miracles of speedy adaptation to new needs and new methods.

"Of course, the entire job is being done with less help. The armed forces and the war plants have recruited millions of agricultural workers. The farmer will have lost an estimated 7-1/2 billion man hours in help by the end of 1943.

"The job is also being done with fewer new tractors and implements. A single destroyer takes more steel than 2,000 tractors. A heavy tank takes the steel needed for 200 plows. Other choices must be made between a grain drill or nineteen Garand rifles; a corn planter or thirteen 75 mm Howitzer shells; a disk harrow or ten 100-pound aerial bombs."

Food production is a prime element of the farmer’s war task. "In November, 1942, America’s fighting men needed twenty-five million pounds of food every day. By the end of this year, the demand will be for fifty million pounds per day — just enough for America’s armed forces.

"It takes all the food 43 acres can produce in a year to feed the men building a single tank…a year’s food from 155 acres to feed a bomber-building crew through the space of the time it takes to build a single bomber…all the food 42,000 acres can produce in one year to energize the men turning out one battleship.

"Or try it this way: A quarter million hens, plus more than 6,000 cows, plus more than 5,000 hogs, can load an average size ship if wheat from 838 acres, 40 acres of tomatoes, 100 acres of snap beans, and 102 acres of peas are used as ballast. The eggs will be dehydrated to a mere 6,000 barrels. The milk will take the form of 6,000 barrels of dried milk, 16,500 cases of evaporated milk, and 20,000 boxes of cheese. The pork will be packed in 14,500 cans. The wheat will provide more than 6,000 sacks of flour.

"Thus the ship of average size will transport the products of 3,824 farms of average size. The figures are almost unbelievable."

"The farmer hardly has time to breathe deeply of that clean country air. Last year, he was busy producing twenty million more hogs, four billion pounds more milk, seven billion more eggs than the year before."

"What does the American farmer do for the war effort? No one man knows all the answers. The United States Department of Agriculture itself can’t catalog the individual items of the farmer’s contribution. No human agency can keep up with them.

"Just on the food side, the minimum annual goal for the duration is three hundred billion pounds of food until war’s end."

"The farmer’s ability to move mountains of earth — and mountains of food and materiel — stems from two things:

The spread on this topic shows the forces of Mother Nature that a farmer must battle — from erosion, hail and flood to fire, dust and drought, plus weeds and even grasshoppers. Comments include a lack of control over the weather and how the ag industry has made major improvements in both equipment, animals and crops to boost production. Details like hybrid corn, contouring land, and mechanization of farm labor are all ways farmers have made the most of what they have.

"All tribute to the farmer here in America who has adopted better ways and better means, as fast as they have become apparent, without coercion or persuasion…according to the dictates of his own good judgment…as a free man seeking the better way of life."

"Why does the American farmer so cheerfully engage in the never-ending task of supplying the ingredients of military might to a fighting world that never gets enough?

"The answer can be stated in a sentence: The farmer wants to keep what he has — not just his acres and his animals and his machinery, but even more important, the intangible values that attach to being a farmer in America." The text further explains the "Four Freedoms" of speech, from want, from fear, and of religion.

"All these things break down into little things — the right to knock off and go to the cornhusking contest or the auction sale — the right to picnic on a neighbor’s lawn…and also bigger things like sending his children to school…and teaching his son to farm the way he has farmed — or better if he can.

"That’s what the American farmer is fighting for…the same things all of us are fighting for…expressed in terms of American farm life —America’s biggest war plant — manned by America’s No. 1 war worker."

Life in the war

A young boy sitting on a John Deere Model B tractor made the cover of the May 25, 1942 issue of LIFE magazine.

Its top story was "Spring planting: War calls for history’s biggest crop." The article highlights the efforts of farmers in Georgia, Texas, Iowa, and North Dakota.

"By the end of May, the seeds are down in the last of the 350,000,000 U.S. cultivated acres, which this year must bear the richest harvest in the world’s troubled history.

"Thus, while lengthening days hastened the decisive battles of 1942, there moved across the U.S. the spring campaign that may decide them all. America this spring planted according to a plan. The ultimate objective is to win the war by feeding ourselves and our allies, and then to write the peace by guaranteeing to the captive peoples security from starvation. Enforced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s powerful system of price controls, bounties and penalties, the plan is bringing about a major reorganization in the map of the nation’s farmlands.

"Regional one-crop production of the five great commodities — wheat, corn, rice, cotton and tobacco — is giving way to diversified production of dairy products, soybeans, hogs —the fats, vitamins and proteins the world needs so badly. Wheat, the bonanza crop of World War I, has this year been curtailed 12%. Instead of growing more wheat, the Great Plains are grazing cattle; instead of more cotton, the South is raising hogs. War quotas call for a solid 10% increase over 1941 across the line, from a slaughter of 83,000,000 hogs to the production of 125,000,000,000 dozen eggs. Planting of soybeans has been stepped up 54%, field peas 73% and peanuts 155%.

"The nation’s farmers must carry through this program in the face of two huge obstacles. There are few new machines to be had. The labor force is short at least a million. Spare parts can be gotten for repairs, and there is talk of using soldiers and an army of ‘farmerettes’ to take in crops. But the farmer knows he will have to make out by longer hours of labor by his own hands and the willing hands of his wife, sons and daughters."

It doesn’t get much more patriotic than this cover of The Furrow from June-July 1944. Two cute young children are flanked by a furling U.S. flag above the headline "With eyes to the stars and hope for the future."

Farm food & fighting factoids

A soldier eats almost twice as much as a civilian

A soldier requires 40 times as much wool as a civilian and it takes 26 sheep to clothe one soldier one year

A single bale of cotton provides enough cloth to cover 20 trop-carrying gliders or to provide 100 parachute harnesses or 106 sailors’ hammocks

About 12-1/2 bushels of corn or wheat makes a barrel of industrial alcohol which, in turn, makes enough smokeless powder to fire a 12-inch shell

It takes the ethyl alcohol from one and a half acres of wheat to fire a 16-inch gun just once

An acre of peanuts releases enough other fats to make nitroglycerin for 520 anti-tank shells

A 300-pound hog furnishes enough fat to make 30 pounds of nitroglycerin which makes 60 pounds of explosive

In a year, America’s cows yield enough milk to fill a navigable canal from Chicago to New Orleans

America’s annual milk supply, pouring over a cataract like Niagara, would power a city of 100,000

America’s cows give enough milk in a year to float the United Nations’ navies

If you look closely, you’ll see the ghosted artwork of a tank behind the farmer on the Model A tractor. The headline "Symbols of Quality" helps promote John Deere Two-Cylinder Tractors.

The first two paragraphs of the text read: "Every tank — every truck — every plane manned by our fighting boys carries an identifying mark. And that mark is a symbol of quality — quality that comes from the workbenches of American industry — quality that instills complete confidence in the weapons of combat.

"But war weapons are not alone in carrying these identification marks. The name, John Deere, on farm equipment is an identifying mark that has been a symbol of quality to American farmers for more than a century. Farmers who own John Deere Tractors and equipment have complete confidence in their farm-front weapons — the confidence that comes from owning equipment that stays on the job — day after day — season after season — year after year."

Another unusual ad in the July-August 1945 issue of The Furrow shows palm trees and the photo of smiling soldier, PFC Norman L. Dillman, USMC, of Crawfordsville, Indiana.

The headline says: "Corn on the Cob…on the road to Tokyo!" Copy reads: "While on this recently-captured island today, I came across a scene that brought back memories of the better days. There among the hustle and bustle of building another step on the road to Tokyo, was a John Deere corn planter and a John Deere disk harrow, doing the same thing that they were doing thousands of miles from here, back home.

"Believe me, with all the modern machinery that war has produced and is being used here, that corn planter drew by far the biggest gallery. Every state in the Corn Belt was represented by the farm boys who had gathered there to watch what they knew should be starting at home soon. It was a queer scene in one sense though; a bulldozer was going ahead leveling the shell holes, another followed with the disk, and another with the planter. All were manned by the "C.B.’s" who had proven another time why they are called the "can do boys."

"Now it would be hard to class a corn planter as a morale builder. But I’ll bet every last man went away feeling better, for he knew that he would be going home soon to the same thing. And even the "City Slickers" left, thinking of old-fashioned "Corn on the Cob" soon to come."

This ad from the Dec-Jan 1943 issue of The Furrow says "You can depend on your John Deere dealer…to keep ‘em working."

Copy reads: "Your John Deere Tractor and equipment are as important to the farm front as tanks, planes, or guns are to the fighting front. Today, as never before, the world is depending on the American farmer to help speed Victory through increased food production.

"To do this, your John Deere Tractor and every other piece of time- and labor-saving equipment on your farm must be kept in working order to help offset the shortage of farm equipment and farm labor.

"Your John Deere dealer takes great pride in his ability to keep your John Deere Tractor and equipment in good working order as a part of his war effort. His shop is well equipped with the latest of servicing equipment. His service men are factory trained. His slogan is ‘Keep ‘em Working’ — for you and for Uncle Sam."

The headline of another ad from the Dec-Jan 1943 issue of The Furrow reads, "Like tanks on the fighting front, John Deere Two-Cylinder Tractors are in the battle, too!"

The text says: "They have no fire power, they carry no armor, and on many farms they are manned by young boys, girls, and older men — but John Deere Tractors are helping to win an important battle — the battle for the greatest output of food the farmers of this nation have ever been called upon to produce.

"Many of the things that have made Uncle Sam’s tanks so effective in the thick of the fight…so dependable in the toughest of going…are found in the design and manufacture of John Deere Two-Cylinder Tractors — the ruggedness…the simplicity…the precision of manufacture…ease of operation…maneuverability…protective safeguards.

"As a result, John Deere Two-Cylinder Tractors are giving an excellent account of themselves on the farm front where they are called upon to do extra work…put in longer hours…give extra service…to get the job done.

"The advantages of John Deere Two-Cylinder Tractors in wartime are equally important in peacetime. Low cost of operation…long life…lower maintenance…ease of operation…give John Deere Tractors an enviable position in the farm field in peace as in war."