AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



When each farmer has taken the land for which 

 his degree of efficiency enables him to compete 

 to the best advantage, the marginal farmer will be 

 found upon the marginal land, the average farmer 

 upon the average land, and the most efficient 

 farmer upon the most productive land. The 

 product resulting from this most economical ap- 

 plication of efficiency to productivity will be meas- 

 ured by the area A C D' B (Fig. 6). It will be 

 noticed that the line C D r is not a straight line. 

 This is not a straight line because its distance from 

 the line A B is determined by multiplying produc- 

 tivity by efficiency, both of which are decreasing 

 factors as we go from the most productive to the 

 marginal land. With regular and close grada- 

 tion of land and of farmers this line would tend 

 to be a regular curve. This curve will probably 

 be irregular, however; for the continuous and 

 regular gradation of land and of farmers which 

 would be necessary to produce a regular curve, 

 gradually falling from C to D', could, perhaps, 

 never be found. 



The line XD', which may be called the rent 

 curve to distinguish it from the product curve 

 CD', is drawn arbitrarily to illustrate the way 

 in which rent will rise above the line D D f , which 

 line represents the level to which the rent could 

 rise on the various grades of land if all farmers 

 possessed the same degree of qualitative efficiency 

 as the marginal farmers. Point X will be some 

 170 



