Many Jews who have felt a strong urge to return to the soil have been prevented by lack of money in recent years, according to Gabriel Davidson, general manager of the Jewish Agricultural Society.
“More Jews than ever before will go back to farming,” he said, “but I don’t look for mass movements.”
Mr. Davidson is now in the course of preparing the society’s thirty-fifth annual report. He points out that in 1900, when the organization first began to function, there were only 216 Jewish families engaged in farming in the United States.
15,000 JEWISH FARMERS
Today, he estimates, at least 15,000 families, comprising a total of 75,000 persons, support themselves in whole or in part from agricultural pursuits in this country.
“At least ninety per cent. of this number originally was urban,” he said.
Adaptation of persons to cultivating the land should be a gradual process, Mr. Davidson feels. There is one reason why the Jewish Agricultural Society tries wherever possible to establish agro-industrial groups, made up of persons who retain their town positions and live on farms.
DEVOTE ALL TIME TO SOIL
“In such cases,” Mr. Davidson said, “there is more opportunity for a man to work into farming gradually. In the beginning, perhaps, he raises just enough food for his family. Meanwhile he is earning money at his regular job in the city. Eventually, after he has learned what farming means and has full realization of what its disadvantages are, he may quit his job and give all his time to agriculture.”
The society’s general manager declared that the forthcoming annual report will show that since its inception in 1900 the organization will have granted about 11,500 farm loans aggregating well over $7,000,000 by the end of the fiscal year. This money, he said, has been placed with Jewish farmers in forty states.
HAS 7 TASKS
The society’s activities are listed under seven main headings, which it enumerates as follows: farm settlement, farm labor, farm credit, extension service, sanitation, home and religion, and social welfare.
Besides its headquarters office at 301 East Fourteenth street here it has branches in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Ellenville, Ulster County, N. Y., which Mr. Davidson describes as the center of the densest Jewish rural population in the United States.
Jewish farmers, he said, naturally settle near where Jews live in the largest numbers in big cities.
Fewer persons have come to him for information during 1934 than in the past, he admitted. This he ascribed to economic conditions.
He favors placing the struggling, displaced Jewish worker on the farm when all the facts indicate that farming will offer him relief. In this connection he explained that not everyone is physically and temperamentally fitted for agriculture. He decried the tendency of uninformed persons to hold forth ruralization as the most desirable thing for all economically maladjusted Jews.
“Farming is a rigorous business,” he pointed out. “It requires endless patience and even when it becomes more or less successful, the financial returns are seldom sensational.”
As for the probability of a large-scale return of Jews to the soil, Mr. Davidson doubts that “the stupendous monetary requirements needed for such a movement can be met.”
He thinks the Jew’s future in farming is brighter than his past, and is proud of the records many Jewish farmers have made. He estimates they have done somewhat better than the general farming public in hanging onto their properties during the depression.
CHANGE WILL BE SLOW
While admitting that the disparity between the percentage of Jews engaged in rural and in urban pursuits constitutes a weakness in the make-up of the entire people, Mr. Davidson insists that any change must come about gradually.
“It is one thing to place a man on a farm,” he pointed out. “It is an entirely different matter to keep him there. He may like the life, but he may not be up to its strenuous requirements.”
Questioned regarding the possibility of establishing an agricultural tradition within those Jewish families which recently have turned to cultivation of the soil, Mr. Davidson expressed optimism.
“It’s true,” he admitted, “that many youths raised on the farm migrate to cities after they reach maturity. This happens among the non-Jewish as well as the Jewish agriculture population.
“But in many cases young men prefer to follow the pursuit of their fathers, despite the fact that they see greater opportunities for acquiring wealth in the cities than in rural communities.
“Not everyone has the same conception of success,” he concluded. “Many men stay in farming, you know, because they are happy in a life of that sort, and not because they hope to grow wealthy at it.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
