382 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 0£f. Doc. 



but should thai be secured by the h)S.s of one peach crop or one 

 apple croi> we have a very large contra-accouul ; foj- the one apple or 

 peach crop will i)robably be worth as much money to us as live po- 

 tato crops. Then, again, when a man is working |)otatoes there is 

 a tendency to saiiitice the trees, which does not haj)pen when there 

 is no crop being grown. Another point with us is that we need 

 organic matter in the soil, and are not able to secure enough to 

 grow proti table crops of potatoes unless we have a rotation of 

 perhaps clover or meadow one or two years in lour and the orchard 

 does not lend itself ver^^ well to such a practice. 



To return to our first question, that of cost of production, it 

 might be wise to take one other crop as a sample. The U. S. De- 

 partment of Agriculture has been determining the cost of produc- 

 tion of certain crops in Minnesota and they tind that it costs about 

 |().0U an acre for labor, teams, seed, etc., to produce a crop of wheat. 

 This does not include any charge for rent. If now, the land be 

 worth 150.00 an acre it would take |3.00 an acre to pay the interest 

 on the 150.00; therefore, this is a legitimate rental and would bring 

 the cost of production to |9.00. If the land be worth |150.00 an 

 acre our rental would be not $3.00 but |9.00 and our cost of pro- 

 duction would be $15.00. If we secure no more yield on the |150.00 

 land than we do on the $50.00 we find it would become unprofitable 

 to try and grow wheat; for with an average yield of 14 bushels at 

 $1.00 per bushel there would be nothing but loss; so that we may 

 say that with our present mode of farming no man can attempt to 

 try and grow a profitable average crop of wheat on land worth 

 more than $100.00 an acre. He simply must cast round for some 

 other type of farming. Our potato-growing involves a larger outlay 

 for labor than wheat growing. The important thing to remember is 

 that rent should not constitute more than a certain percentage of 

 the total cost, so that any crop which involves considerable labor 

 can l)e grown on higher priced land than a crop which involves 

 little labor, and we find that potato-growing has its limit, that is, 

 about $300.00 per acre. In other words, we cannot atford to pay 

 more than $18.00 an acre rent for land for potato-growing, and with 

 average yields, no man could afford to pay this. No 90-bushel crop of 

 potatoes could atford such a sum, in fact, it could not afford to pay 

 much more than $3.00 or $4.00 rent. Orchard land on the other 

 hand, with the large amount of labor involved and large amount 

 expended for packages, frequently running to $100.00 per acre or 

 more, can pay a higher rent than potato-growing, and yet, not have 

 the rent a higher percentage of the total expense. So that we are 

 really trying to grow a crop of fruit trees which will warrant the 

 expenditure of a considerable sum of money in order to secure re- 

 turns as soon as possible, and, at the same time, trying to devote 

 part of the same land to a crop which will not warrant any such 

 expenditure. This, however, is but one way in which the two crops 

 conflict. The growing of potatoes gives no opportunity for the in- 

 corporation of a large quantity of organic matter. 



I would like to give the figures which have been issued by the 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture in regard to the cost of growing 

 potatoes without fertilizer in Minnesota. 



