404 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



No generalization can be drawn from this table as to which crops 

 will, as a rule, be most profitable to the farmer. It happened that 

 the small-grain crops were good and the corn crop generally poor the 

 year these records were kept. It happened also that half the corn 

 and all the tobacco had to be planted a second time, which increased 

 the labor cost of these crops. But this table is of significance in that 

 it contains evidence that the farmer or the experiment station worker 

 is in danger of going wrong if he applies generally the common method 

 of comparing profits per acre. On the basis of profit per acre, the 

 tobacco was almost three times as profitable as the corn, but on the 

 basis of profit per hour, the corn was about four times as profitable 

 as the tobacco. Where approximately the same labor is expended 

 per acre the same result is reached, whether one uses the acre or the 

 labor basis. As has already been suggested, profit per acre multiplied 

 by the number of acres the farmer can handle of the two crops may 

 be a means of combining the acre and the labor basis of calculating 

 relative profits. 



The relative merits of these methods will not be discussed here. 

 All methods should be tested and a search made for the best possible 

 plan for comparing the profitableness of crops. 



Taking profits per unit of labor as a starting-point for further con- 

 sideration, note some of the limitations and complexities involved in 

 its use. Where two crops can be found which require the attention 

 of the farmer at exactly the same time throughout all their operations 

 and in forms of labor which require the same amount of managerial 

 activity per unit of labor, the question of relative profitableness is 

 easily worked out on the basis of profit per unit of labor, but where 

 crops are competitive for a portion of the year and complementary 

 for the remainder of the year, the solution of the problem of relative 

 profitableness is not so simple. 



Corn and tobacco give a good example. These crops are com- 

 petitive at the states when it is vital that the work be done without 

 delay. This means that the one crop cannot be increased without 

 decreasing the other. Yet a very large proportion of the labor on 

 these crops can be performed, as shown in Figs. 18 and 19, without any 

 conflict of one with the other. Before any conclusion can be drawn 

 as to which of these crops yields the larger return per unit of labor 

 it is necessary to ascertain to what alternative use the labor could have 

 been put and the rate of return the labor would have yielded during 

 the time devoted to harvesting and stripping the tobacco and the 

 time of harvesting and shredding the corn. Using this rate as the 



