WEBVTT

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These are the sights and sounds of a new age in agriculture, the era of automation down

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on the farm.

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On a rural road in Indiana in a frame and limestone house lives Warren North, one of

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America's great farmers. He wears his greatness shyly, but it is there for those who look in

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his own hard life, in his love of the soil, and in his skill at putting science to work

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on his farm. Twenty years ago, Warren North could not afford a new pair of work shoes.

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Today he symbolizes an agricultural revolution that has changed American farming more in

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these last 20 years than in the 200 years that went before.

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From the old low slung barns and the new towering steel silos, Warren North's Green Ridge Farm

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fans out across more than 1,000 acres of the richest land in northern Indiana. To farm this

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green ridge, he employs only two full-time hired hands and two part-time helpers. For

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Warren North believes in machinery and has since that day in 1933 when he bought his

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first tractor for $550. Today he owns more than $200,000 in farm equipment and every

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piece of machinery like this forage chopper used in harvesting hay has more than repaid

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its cost. These blue-black silos are the repository for the fresh cut hay which will travel through

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this blower to the top of the 50-foot tower. Two days harvest provides enough hay, 400

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tons to fill one silo and a full silo lasts eight months. Farmer North's glass-lined hermetically

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sealed silos allow him to keep hay and corn indefinitely without decay. Stored fresh,

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the fodder will stay fresh. The purchase of the silos marked a fateful decision for Warren North

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until 1957 had been growing and selling grain and feeding some hogs and cattle.

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The decision was automation. Realizing that raising grain did not pay enough,

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he switched to the mass production of livestock using all the grain he grew for fodder. To go

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with the silos, he installed an intricate system of buttons and switches that makes feeding the

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cattle a one-man push-button operation. It works something like this. Each silo has an outlet inside

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the barn. Passing through this outlet, ground corn drops into a snake-like auger which pushes

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the feed forward. Farmer North from his instrument panel can select and balance his cattle's diet.

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Since there is a button for each silo outlet, he is able, if he wants, to limit the livestock

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to the ground corn passing in close-up. Or if he wants, he can, as is done here, blend hay with the corn.

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Providing more variety in the meal, another auger emptying two more silos can add a third

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type of fodder. But even this is not all. For supplementary vitamins and hormones,

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at an added expense of $1,000 a month, also drop into the riving augers.

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At the bottom of the feed, all ingredients have been blended in one auger that propels

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the mixture up a steep incline and toward a feed bunk outside the barn.

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The auger passes directly over the 120-foot bunk. At regular intervals,

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trap doors open automatically to distribute the feed to each animal.

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In ten minutes, push-button farming has completed a job that would have taken five

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men working with pitchforks and buckets half a day to do. For Warren North, the farm is his first

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love. The second is the two-story pipe organ in the corner of his living room. Here he sits often

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after the farm chores are done.

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Twenty years ago, Warren North of Brookston, Indiana, had only his faith in himself,

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his farm, and the future. It was enough. He has found a good life from the good earth.