FOR BETTER CROPS 43 



As a rule, farmers market their grains as soon as convenient 

 after they are garnered, as most of the commercial crops of these 

 grains are produced in the north temperate zone. This puts the 

 bulk of these commodities on the market in our northern autumn 

 and early winter. 



Since the purchasing agencies are better organized than the 

 original sellers, the producers, it is believed that this tends to 

 place the farmers under some disadvantage as to price. The 

 ability to prognosticate prices has been successfully developed 

 by comparatively few farmers, while many of those who make 

 trade a business have developed a peculiar ability along this line. 



Scientitic investigations are being made of the marketing of 

 farm products ; and in some cases growers have met combina- 

 tions of buvers with combinations of sellers. This brings barter 



A bounteous har-«rest 



and sale to a more equal basis, often with only a single represen- 

 tative, or better, with a committee, on either side. The deal is 

 then on a broad basis and all the facts may be available to both 

 sides. 



Effect of Reports and Organization — The development of 

 government reports of crops, of stocks on hand and in transit, 

 and of demand, and the organization of buyers and sellers offers 

 a most interesting phase for study in our rural economics. 



The world is becoming more co-operative, even more sensibly 

 socialistic, using that word in its true sense, than it has yet 

 recognized. Farming is to be the one great industry where 

 individualism is conserved for the business and family life, and 

 where only those things where co-operation is necessary and 

 best, are given over as public or co-operative functions. 



Individualism under co-operative organization was made 



