AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



per composite unit of labor and capital-goods, can 

 be gotten only by more intensive culture. 



In this connection the influence of lower wages 

 and lower interest and higher rents, upon the 

 choice of crops, should be reviewed, because it 

 often happens that a rise in rents will result in 

 the change from a crop which requires but little 

 expenditure for labor and capital-goods per acre 

 to one that requires large expenditures per acre. 



That degree of intensity of culture which 

 brings the largest net profit to the landowning 

 farmer or to the tenant who has a fixed rent to 

 pay, seems also to be that degree of intensity 

 which makes the total amount of land, labor, 

 capital-goods, and managerial activity employed 

 in the agricultural industry, most productive. It 

 appears, therefore, that at this point there is a 

 harmony of interests between the individual and 

 society as a whole; but it would seem that the 

 interest of the share tenant is not in harmony 

 with the interest of society as a whole in this 

 regard, for if the better grades of land are farmed 

 so extensively as the interest of the share tenant 

 seems to dictate, poorer grades of land would need 

 to be used in order that the labor and capital- 

 goods of the country be employed, and some of 

 this labor and capital-goods on the marginal land 

 would be creating a smaller product than it could 

 be made to yield if employed in farming the better 

 grades of land to a more intensive degree; and, 



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