AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS. 33 



records on uniform lines, which can be collated and compared, 

 and the results of which will be of practical use to farmers, 

 to the industry as a whole, and also from a national point of 

 view. 



The Committee includes representatives of producers and 

 consumers. Its status is impartial and independent, and any 

 information obtained is treated confidentially. 



Detailed cost records of all farming operations are being 

 kept on a large number of representative farms throughout the 

 United Kingdom, and, where necessary, assistance is rendered 

 by the Country Officers of the Committee to farmers who are 

 keeping these records and who agree to make them available 

 to the Committee. 



Detailed costs of producing milk are being obtained on about 

 180 farms. 



In addition to these detailed cost records, several hundreds 

 of farm accounts showing the profit or loss on the year's working 

 have been received and tabulated anonymously, and reports 

 of the results have been published. 



The Committee believes that the continued collection of 

 information such as the above will prove of distinct service 

 in many vital questions affecting the industry. It will, in 

 addition to being available for national purposes, prove of 

 educational value to individual farmers, and should increase 

 efficiency and economy, and the better organisation of the 

 financial side of farming. 



Farm Accounts. 



Few will deny that there is an urgent need for farm accounts 

 to be kept on a much wider scale than hitherto. The industry 

 as a whole has probably lost considerably both in money and 

 efficiency by the prevailing neglect of farm book-keeping. There 

 is on this subject a surprising unanimity in the reports of several 

 Government Committees of Enquiry which have been instituted 

 recently. Without exception they record the lack of informa- 

 tion and urge the necessity for more and better account keeping. 



It is not difficult to understand why farm book-keeping has 

 been neglected in the past. The term book-keeping itself reeks 

 of the town and the office and indoor work. The farming com- 

 munity has been proud of its isolation and distinctiveness from 

 the town, and suspicious of all that is connoted by factories, 

 ledgers and the like. It has maintained its high level of technical 

 efficiency in the past without book-keeping assistance. The aver- 

 age farmer is an open-air man with a temperamental objection 

 to account books, and with little time and less inclination to 

 think about them. 



This state of affairs, however, is an old and closed chapter. 



D 



