ORCHARD HEATING 35 



left to do the heating during the years when a small yield is 

 obtained because of frosts, then instead of buying heating 

 equipment one should go out of this particular kind of farming 

 or else by better management cut down the cost of production. 

 Solving for "n" in the above equation (1) we obtain: 



b (s k c Dh P(I+i) (3) 



(g r+L) 



which shows that if the amount of money left over after all the 

 costs of production except heating have been paid is consider- 

 able and if the cost of heating one night is small because olf 

 cheap labor and oil, then one can afford to heat several nights, 

 i. e. to be able to heat, you must get a high price for the fruit, 

 the cost of production must be small, including interest on the 

 principal so that there will be money left over to spend on the 

 heating and you must be able to get the fuel cheaply. Although 

 in equation (1) the cost fo heating is a sub tractive factor and 

 appears to cut down the profits by increasing the cost of pro- 

 duction, yet we shall show later in this paper that it will either 

 increase or decrease the profits depending on whether the value 

 of the fruit that is saved by the heating is more than the cost 

 of the heating. Of course, ilf there be two orchards where ev- 

 erything else is the same (same labor cost, same investment, 

 etc.) the only difference being that one experiences killing frosts 

 while the other does not, it is obvious that the one where heating 

 has to be resorted to will make less profits. 



We might have two different farms where the one that ex- 

 perienced killing frosts and had to increase his cost of produc- 

 tion by heatinjg 1 had less money tied up in the farm and his farm 

 is close to the market and his other costs of production were 

 sufficiently low that his entire cost of production including the 

 heating cost was as low as that of the farmer who does not have 

 to heat his orchard. He could then resort to orchard heating 

 and compete with the other farmer. 



Let us examine this proposition mathematically. 



Let the subscript "/' stand for the farm where frost does 

 not occur and " 2 " for the one where it does occur. 



Let us assume that in the two localities the farmers are equal- 

 ly well organized and their product is equally good and equally 

 advertised so that s 1 =s 2 and that the heating saves the entire 

 crop so that b!=b 2 also that the picking and packing cost is the 

 same making k 1 =k 2 also that the interest rate on their money 

 and the profits in per cent are to be the same. 



