TYPES OF FARMING 65 



TABLE 9. AVERAGE PRICE RECEIVED BY FARMERS FOR 

 BUTTER (1910 AND 1911) l 



1 U. S. Dept. Agr., Yearbook, 1910, p. 632; 1911, p. 634. 



Iowa, but that butter, the manufactured product, is 

 only 16 per cent higher. It takes 2.5 pounds of butter to 

 buy a bushel of corn on a New York farm and only 1.9 

 pounds in Iowa. It takes 51 pounds of^ butter to buy 

 a ton of hay on a New York farm, but on an Iowa 

 farm it takes only 34 pounds. On a Massachusetts farm 

 it takes 59 pounds of butter to pay for a ton of 

 hay. 



It is evident that the East cannot compete with the 

 Middle West in butter production. The center of butter 

 production is rapidly shifting to the region of cheap feed. 

 Those farmers who persist in making butter in regions of 

 high-priced feed are usually receiving very little for their 

 work. Sometimes other things are so profitable as to 

 overcome the loss on butter. Even those farmers who 

 have special customers rarely receive enough to make the 

 business very profitable. 



In one county in New York it was found that farmers 

 who made butter rarely made hired-man's wages, and 

 when they did, it was because the profits from some other 



