58 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



FARM MANAGEMENT: ITS APPLICATION TO SOUTHEEN 

 NEW ENGLAND CONDITIONS. 



J. S. GATES, AGRICULTUKIST IN CHARGE OF NORTHEASTERN STATES, BUREAU 

 OF FARM MANAGEMENT, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICUL- 

 TURE. 



Farm management considers farming as a business, and 

 attempts to analyze the various factors having to do with the 

 success or failure of that business as it is found conducted on 

 the individual farm, and in so far as possible to determine the 

 broad outstanding factors for ej95ciency which admit of general 

 application to the region. 



The solution of many of the practical problems of agricul- 

 ture which have been worked out by various scientific experi- 

 menters are found to have already been solved generations 

 previous by large groups of farmers. Particularly is this true 

 of farm organization and management. Every farmer is of 

 necessity more or less of an experimenter. The results of 

 thousands of such experimenters gathered by the investigator, 

 classified and interpreted in their bearing on the community's 

 problems, and on the individual farm's problems, yield not 

 only many fundamental broadly applicable principles of good 

 farm organization, but also show in more or less detail just in 

 what respect a successfully operated farm differs from one 

 which is a failure or only moderately successful. 



In previous decades the agricultural investigator largely 

 concerned himself with the study of how to accomplish certain 

 ends; for example, how best to feed a pig or a cow, how best to 

 raise potatoes or fruit. The farm management investigator is 

 concerned with the study of whether to feed a cow or a pig, 

 whether to raise fruit or potatoes; and if an industry be found 

 to be desirable, to what extent it should enter into the farm 

 organization, and with what intensity it should be pursued. 

 All of these problems have in the aggregate been solved by the 



