52 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



Changes in farm labor conditions may affect the choice of 

 farm enterprises. An unusual demand for laborers in the city, 

 or the withdrawal of men from the farm to go into the army, 

 may so change the condition in a given community that it 

 becomes necessary to select crops which require much less 

 labor. This might easily result in a change from an intensive 

 crop like tobacco or sugar beets, which require very much 

 labor per acre, to a more extensive crop like corn, which re- 

 quires much less labor per acre. On the other hand, a farmer 

 with a growing family may find it desirable, as his children be- 

 come old enough to help, to introduce sugar beets or some other 

 intensive crop on his farm in order to give employment to the 

 members of his family. 



The amount of available capital may influence the farmer in 

 the choice of crops. If he has little capital with which to buy 

 dairy cows, he may for this reason produce grain to sell instead 

 of producing feed for dairy cows, which might be the more 

 profitable if he had the capital with which to go into the 

 dairy business. 



The characteristics of the farmer, his likes and dislikes, his 

 previous training and special skill in particular lines of produc- 

 tion, may very greatly affect his choice of enterprises. That 

 which is profitable for one farmer to produce in a given com- 

 munity may not be profitable to another because of the fact 

 that the second farmer may lack the skill required in carrying out 

 that line of production. 



It is a well-recognized fact that the different crops make 

 different demands upon the soil. For this reason, the crops 

 which are associated together in the systems of rotation should 

 be such as will make supplementary demands upon the soil's 

 elements of fertility. This in itself, however, is not a safe 

 guide in determining which plants should be introduced into 

 the field system ; for it might lead to the cultivation of the less 

 profitable of two competing crops, and thus reduce the farmer's 

 total net profit. Yet it should ever be kept in mind that if 

 one of two competing crops exhausts the soil while the other 

 adds to its fertility, this fact must be taken into account when 



