This does not necessarily mean a few very large 

 farms, for agricultural experts tell us that at the 

 present time when a farm exceeds 500 acres the in- 

 creased cost of supervision more than equals the 

 advantages of larger size. Possibly with a motorized 

 farm the maximum number of acres for efficient han- 

 dling as a unit may be larger. Obviously, there is 

 some unit of maximum advantage in farming, and the 

 man who utilizes this unit, while he operates at an 

 advantage over the farmer with a smaller acreage, 

 does not compete at a disadvantage with the producer 

 who controls a larger acreage. 



The tendency to larger farms, then, does not 

 necessarily mean a few great landowners, but it ap- 

 parently does mean that the 1,150,000 farms of over 

 175 acres are likely to be increased in number. See 

 Chart 15. Stated otherwise, it means that there will 

 be a larger number of leadership farm families who 

 more efficiently apply business principles to farming, 

 who have more wants, and who have the income 

 necessary to buy the merchandise required to satisfy 

 these wants. 



Commercial Fertilizer 



It is likely that the output on the farm and the 

 farm income will be materially increased by the more 

 general and judicious use of commercial fertilizers. 

 The experience of leading farmers in all agricultural 

 sections and a multitude of experiments prove that 

 increased yields of most farm crops, and at a lower 

 cost of production, can be secured by the use of com- 

 mercial fertilizer. To illustrate, in Indiana the use of 

 commercial fertilizer on wheat land by representative 

 farmers in ten counties showed an average net profit 

 of 180 per cent over and above the cost of the fer- 

 tilizer. Stated otherwise, the average expenditure for 



[41] 



