AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



the individual farmers harmonizes with that of 

 society as a whole in this regard. 



After the student has followed through the 

 further development of the subject this principle 

 will not seem so abstract as it may appear on the 

 surface. It will then be seen that if a farmer is 

 only able to make a living on land with a low de- 

 gree of productivity, that the chances of his mak- 

 ing a living and paying the rent on the better 

 grades of land where the rent will be higher, are 

 very poor indeed. On the other hand if a farmer 

 can make a profit on the low grade land, which 

 enables him to lay aside something each year, the 

 chances are that such a farmer can increase his 

 savings by selecting more productive land and 

 paying a higher rent for its use. The writer has 

 known farmers who succeeded in making a liv- 

 ing on cheap land, but who utterly failed to make 

 the rent when they moved to better land, whereas 

 there were other farmers who could pay the rent 

 for the more productive land, and have more 

 money left at the end of the year than they could 

 possibly have had in case they had farmed the 

 less productive land which could be had for a 

 much lower rent. 



This process of shifting the farmers who are 

 qualitatively less efficient to the less productive 

 land operates more or less automatically. The 

 writer once knew a farmer who paid a cash rent 

 for a farm of one hundred acres of good land. 



62 



