ORGANIZATION OF THE AGRICULTURAL ENTERPRISE 339 



wasteful of fertility it is because he has had it to waste, but he has 

 been exceedingly economical of labor, which was costly, and has pro- 

 duced the cheapest food the world has ever eaten, or ever will eat, 

 though the yields per acre have been little more than half those of 

 older countries. Our question has been not how much per acre but 

 how much per man, and in this the American farmer has been right 

 even though his average yields have been low. 



We are, however, approaching old-country conditions. Land is 

 \ growing scarce, and therefore costly, so that elements other than labor 

 have begun to enter into the cost of production and food is necessarily 

 higher. 



Under pioneer conditions the highest yields have been the most 

 profitable, because they were the result, not of expensive methods of 

 farming, but of especially rich spots of land or of favorable seasons, 

 costing nothing extra beyond the increased expense of harvesting. 

 It is still true that high yields are profitable if they can be cheaply 

 produced, but the general principle is that the higher the yield the greater 

 the cost, not only per acre, but per bushel. 



This natural operation of the economic law of diminishing returns 

 in farming is best illustrated by an experiment begun many years ago 

 by Lawes and Gilbert at Rothamsted, England, the oldest experiment 

 station in the world. They applied, every year for twelve years, 

 different amounts of complete fertilizer to adjoining fields of wheat, 

 with the following results: 



By this we see (fourth column) that as an average of the 

 twelve years the first 200 pounds of fertilizer returned 10 bushels, 

 but that a -second 200 pounds increased the yield only 8 bushels 

 above the first, and that a third 200 pounds returned but a little 

 over a bushel and a half above the double dose, showing that 

 increased outlay is not always followed by correspondingly increased 

 yields. 



