INTENSIVE AND EXTENSILE FARMING 151 



INTENSIVE AND EXTENSIVE ENTERPRISES 



102. Comparison of intensive and extensive enterprises. 

 Sometimes the crop that pays the largest profit per hour 

 is also most profitable per acre. Such a crop is doubly de- 

 sirable. But the vast majority of American farmers are 

 wise in continuing to raise the staple crops. The world 

 needs hay as well as strawberries. It needs cotton as well 

 as oranges, and seems to be willing to pay its workers just as 

 good wages for the extensive as for the intensive crops. 



The more speculative enterprises have more violent 

 ups and downs, so that if the best years are taken, very 

 surprising results may be shown. On one farm in 1911 the 

 profit on 15 acres of cabbages was $1174. In the same year 

 on the same farm the loss on 14 acres of cucumbers was 

 $555. It would be impossible to make either such a large 

 profit 'or such a large loss on hay. The average of the 

 cucumbers and cabbages was less than the profit made on 

 the same area in hay. The next year, 1912, cabbages were 

 so ch^ap that th^y failed to pay, but cucumbers paid well. 

 When other conditions are right it is desirable to combine 

 one or two of the more speculative intensive crops with 

 general farm crops. 



Whether oranges, grapes, strawberries, potatoes, chickens 

 or roses, or some other intensive crop, will pay better 

 than corn, oats, wheat, hay, and cotton, and cows, is 

 chiefly a matter of adaptation to conditions. There are 

 conditions under which apples pay better than corn, just 

 as there are conditions under which corn pays better than 

 apples. But the average of success for a series of years 

 in the best apple or orange regions does not appear to be 

 any better than the average in the best corn or hay re- 

 gions. The more speculative enterprises have more vio- 



