Agricultural employment also fell substantially, both in absolute and relative terms, and labor was redeployed outside agriculture. The number of workers per farm was stable, while farm sizes grew rapidly from an average of 167 acres in 1950 to 401 acres in 1978.
Mechanization is the main facilitator of the trend toward bigger farms. This goes along with another lesson from historical data and contemporary experience: Generalization 6. Large farms adopt new forms of machinery considerably faster than small farms. Because larger farms offer more collateral, they make it easier to borrow to invest in new machinery.

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Agricultural employment also fell substantially, both in absolute and relative terms, and labor was redeployed outside agriculture. The number of workers per farm was stable, while farm sizes grew rapidly from an average of 167 acres in 1950 to 401 acres in 1978.
Mechanization is the main facilitator of the trend toward bigger farms. This goes along with another lesson from historical data and contemporary experience: Generalization 6. Large farms adopt new forms of machinery considerably faster than small farms. Because larger farms offer more collateral, they make it easier to borrow to invest in new machinery.

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