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Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and into the early part of the twentieth, American agriculture was expanding and improving under the influence of growing demand, the westward movement, mechanization of farm operations, and scientific farming developments. Under these influences, yields and labor productivity in field crops generally increased. Until recently, however, little has been known about the course of productivity change in specific agricultural activities during the nineteenth century. Dairy production was an important component of the American farm economy, accounting for about 16 percent of U.S. farm output at the beginning of the twentieth century and approximately 14 percent of gross income from farm production in 1910. Changes in dairy yields during the period 1850–1910 have been analyzed previously. The purpose of this article is to estimate labor input time, to measure the change in average labor productivity in U.S. dairy farming, and to examine the economic implications of this change, thus extending the analysis to another component of the dairy production function. The necessary data were estimated with techniques that utilized available fragmentary data in conjunction with information in literary material.

Agricultural improvement, as analysts of economic growth often stress, plays an important role in a developing economy. Recent quantitative research has expanded our knowledge of developments in American agriculture during the period when the economy was becoming industrialized. The purpose of this article is to compute new estimates of average milk yields (output per milk animal) in American dairy agriculture and to analyze the sources of changes in these yields between 1850 and 1910.