THE CHOICE OF CROPS 47 



hour. In this case, for each hundred hours the corn dairyman 

 received $40, whereas the tobacco man received $30 plus $6, 

 or $36 for tobacco and supplementary work. 



It has been suggested that profit per acre, multiplied by the 

 number of acres a man can operate may be a better method of 

 comparing the relative profitableness of competing crops than 

 profits per hour. This method would seem to possess all the 

 merit of the other methods mentioned, but is not without the 

 objection that whereas corn, for example, may be put in the 

 silo and made the basis of winter employment in the dairy, no 

 such farm enterprise rests upon tobacco. Furthermore, to- 

 bacco usually conflicts not only with corn but with small grains. 

 Tobacco lends itself to a single crop system. For this reason 

 it becomes necessary to compare the profits from tobacco plus 

 whatever may be combined with this single crop, with corn, 

 oats, and hay, plus the live stock industry which is based upon 

 these crops. In this case the effect upon the land should be 

 carefully considered. 



Where two crops conflict and the increase of the one requires 

 the decrease of the other, the various rules may be used to aid 

 in passing judgment, but in the final analysis all cases come to 

 this : Everything considered, choose from each group of competing 

 crops the one which will add most to the farmer's total net profit, 

 and combine as many non-competing crops as will add enough 

 to the total profits of the farm to make it worth his time to produce 

 this crop rather than use the time for self-improvement or the en- 

 joyment of life. 



When this principle of crop selection is followed, it will 

 not be true, necessarily, that each crop will be grown where the 

 facilities for its production are the greatest; for it may happen, 

 for example, that in the region where the facilities for the pro- 

 duction of sugar beets are best, tobacco or some other competing 

 crop will enable the farmer to win a larger net profit, in which 

 case the sugar beet might well be excluded from the system of 

 crop rotation in the very region where the natural conditions 

 for its production are best. 



It is by knowing relative prices that the farmers, who know 



