AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



pose, for example, that the rent of a given piece 

 of land is three dollars per acre, and that the net 

 profit per acre is five dollars when the land is de- 

 voted to maize, and that the net profit is twenty 

 dollars per acre when the land is devoted to sugar 

 beets; but that the farmer can operate thirty-five 

 acres of maize and only seven acres of beets. 

 Then he could win one hundred and seventy-five 

 dollars net profit by producing maize, and only 

 one hundred and forty dollars by producing 

 beets. But, suppose the rent of the land should 

 rise to five dollars per acre, without any change in 

 the prices of the products or in the costs of pro- 

 duction. The profits per acre of maize would 

 then be three dollars, and that of an acre of beets 

 would be eighteen dollars, so that, with the same 

 proportions as to the number of acres which the 

 farmer can operate of these two crops, the total 

 net profit which he could win from the production 

 of maize would be reduced to one hundred and 

 five dollars, while that from the beets would have 

 been reduced to one hundred and twenty-six dol- 

 lars only. In this hypothetical case the rise in 

 the rent would result in a subtraction of only 

 fourteen dollars from the total profits of the beet 

 crop, while it would result in a reduction of the 

 profits on maize of seventy dollars, so that the 

 crop which was the more profitable before the 

 rise in the rent would become the less profitable 

 as a result of the rise in rent. 



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