QUESTIONS OF PRINCIPLE 51 



But this argument does not concern the farmer who is farm- 

 ing by his books, to whom a knowledge of costs is essential ; 

 once more it is the cost incurred that he must know, and the 

 value, or otherwise, of the work will be revealed when he 

 comes to market the crops, a part of the charge for which 

 is represented by the expenditure upon the attempt to 

 clean the land which grew them. 



In connexion with the fallow crop it is a question whether 

 rents and rates ought not to be included with the unexhausted 

 cleaning costs, and carried forward for distribution over 

 the rotation. This, of course, is what is done where land 

 is bare-fallowed ; and having regard to the nature of the 

 fallow crop, that is to say, that it is a crop introduced, in the 

 main, to make the bare fallow less of a dead loss, it might 

 be proper to relieve it of this charge, or anyhow of some part 

 of it. The practice of the writer is to include rent and rates 

 in the cost of the crop. This process of carrying forward 

 cleaning costs incurred on fallows, whether bare or cropped, 

 for distribution over all the crops which follow until the 

 fallow comes round again is a laborious one. Moreover, 

 the distribution of the items between succeeding crops rests 

 upon an arbitrary basis, for no one can foretell the measure 

 of the benefit which may be expected to accrue to each. 

 At the same time some apportionment must be attempted 

 for the reasons already stated. It has been suggested, 

 however, that in certain cases much of the work may be 

 avoided without any loss of accuracy in the result. Where 

 a clearly defined rotation is followed on the farm, and where 

 the annual acreage assigned to each crop in it is virtually the ' 

 same, there is no gain in carrying forward the costs of 

 cleaning land and writing them off over the rotation, for 

 the same result may be secured by distributing them over 

 the crops of the same year. It is true that a fallow made in 

 any year cannot benefit the crops of that year, but assuming 

 the conditions of farming indicated above, together with 

 stable conditions in the labour market, the costs of the 

 fallow in any one year will approximate closely to those of 

 any other year, so that there is no reason why, for simplifica- 



D2 



