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<br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br /> <br />002253 <br /> <br />While long-term trends show some increasing size of both irri- <br />gated and dryland farms, these statistics suggest trends quite con- <br />trary to the popular notion that farms in general and Texas farms <br />in particular are rapidly becoming fewer in number and very large <br />in individual holdings. While this is certainly a clear trend in <br />most regions of the Nation -- e.g., the Southwest Kansas area <br />average size was double that of Texas' South Plains, and there <br />were 928 farms over 2,000 acres, it appears that there has not been <br />a dramatic consolidation of ownerships in the Texas region. The <br />vast majority are one-section or a bit more, about one-third of <br />which are owner-operated, two-thirds tenant farmed on a crop-share <br />lease basis with the landowner. <br />Turnin9 to trends in the application of irrigation practices <br />on these holdings, one of many commentaries is revealing. Writing <br />in the 1977 revision of the Hockley County long-Range Program <br />sponsored by the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, the Program <br />Building Committee summarized the situation in the following not <br />too optimistic terms: <br />"Total cultivated acres has not increased much since the <br />fifties but irrigation development reached 1,800 irriga- <br />tion wells in 1952, 5,800 in 1968, and 6,264 in 1975. <br />Many of these irrigation wells produced 8" pipes of <br />water in the fifties, but have declined to three and <br />four inch pipes in recent years....Although 200,000 <br />acres used to be fairly well irrigated, this acreage <br /> <br />IV-39 <br /> <br />Arthur D Little, Inc <br />