MANAGEMENT 239 



Rotation of crops. Diversification of crops almost invariably 

 means some sort of rotation. One admirable scheme, though 

 there are many others applicable throughout the greater part of 

 the corn belt, is a three-year rotation of corn, oats, and clover. 

 Where the tillable land of the farm is divided in three parts, 

 each part in turn being put through this rotation, these crops 

 will be found to be noncompeting in both senses of the term. 

 One great obstacle to diversification is the lack of suitable crops 

 to work together in rotation. Thus it is difficult to combine 

 corn, wheat, and clover because of the difficulty of getting fall 

 wheat sown after the corn is harvested, and spring wheat is 

 usually grown farther north than the corn belt. A great obsta- 

 cle to diversified farming in the cotton belt has been the diffi- 

 culty of finding a noncompeting crop to go with cotton, which 

 crop is very exacting in its demands upon the farmer's time. 

 Though cotton land is generally good corn land, these two 

 crops demand the farmer's care at about the same seasons of 

 the, year. Therefore every acre which he adds to his corn crop 

 subtracts an acre from his cotton crop, and he naturally prefers 

 to give his time to the more profitable of the two crops. 



Large-, medium-, or small-scale farming. Another large and 

 fundamental question which the farm manager must determine 

 is the scale upon which he shall carry on his farming opera- 

 tions. Sometimes this question is settled for him by the size of 

 his farm, the amount of capital, and the limit of his credit. But 

 if lie is known to be a capable farmer, he can usually rent as 

 much land and borrow as much capital as he can handle effec- 

 tively or economically. If large-scale farming were distinctly 

 more profitable than small-scale farming, he would have no diffi- 

 culty in embarking upon large-scale production. It is because 

 lar^e-scale farming is usually less profitable, and because large- 

 scale farmers fail more frequently than medium-scale farmers, 

 that it is difficult to rent land or borrow capital on a large scale. 



