FARMING AS A BUSINESS. I47 



CHAPTER X. 



FARMING AS A BUSINESS. 



We have considered the various directions in which scientific 

 research is helping the farmer, and have tried to show how a 

 small number of research v/orkers are engaged in studying the 

 soil and the means by which it can be made to produce more 

 abundantly, and in investigating the many problems of animal 

 and plant life. There remains to be considered a subject which 

 is equally important, if its value has not hitherto been so widely 

 recognised. The study of this subject is scientifically described 

 as research into agricultural economics ; but in so far as concerns 

 its direct application to problems confronting the farmer, it may 

 be termed the investigation of methods which will enable a 

 farmer to understand his business. For however useful a 

 knowledge of how to increase output may be, the main concern 

 of the farmer is to sell that output at a profit, and to this end he 

 must not only understand the position v/ith regard to the trend of 

 markets and prices, but he must knov/ accurately what the output 

 in question is costing him. to produce. It is a curious sidelight 

 on our national attitude of mind that, notwithstanding that 

 agriculture lies at the root of the prosperity of all nations (for 

 we must eat to live), it is often forgotten that farming, after all, 

 is a business, and that if it is to keep pace with industrial com- 

 petition the farmer must learn to m.anage his business with the 

 same care and attention to method as does the manager of a 

 factory. Unfortunately the subject of agricultural economics 

 has been seriously neglected in the past, and agricultural teachers 

 have accordingl}^ little enough information to put before the 

 farmer to-day. It is of little use, for example, to tell the occupier 

 of a mixed farm that he should know exactly what it is costing 

 him to produce a gallon of milk, unless at the same time he can 

 be shown how to secure that information, and it is the investiga- 

 tion of problems of this sort which come within the sphere of the 

 research worker. The institution engaged in investigating the 

 subject in this country is the Institute for Research in Agricultural 

 Economics attached to the University of Oxford, and although 

 this was established onh^ a year before the War, considerable 

 progress has already been made, which it is the purpose of this 

 chapter to record. 



