June, 1939] The Agricultural Conservation Program in N. H. 5 



bers of hens were considerably larger in the survey data.- There were 

 rather large discrepancies in individual towns between the survey data 

 and the census but the totals for the 12 towns agree fairly well. 



In order to study the data more in detail, the farms were grouped into 

 classes based primarily on amount of farming done and the aggressive- 

 ness of the management. First the farms were divided into commer- 

 cial and non-commercial groups. « Farms were considered as commer- 

 cial if their organization represented over 100 man work units. ^ How- 

 ever, the usual method of calculating man work units was changed to 

 avoid crediting farms with productive work where large acreages of 

 tillage land on semi-abandoned farms are cut over to secure a small 

 amount of hay.^ 



The commercial farms were divided into two groups : active commer- 

 cial and less active commercial. The criteria by which this grouping 

 was done are difficult to describe in concrete quantitative terms. The 

 active farms are those which are more aggressively managed than most 

 farms in the state. They are characterized by more livestock and 

 more activity in production. The less active commercial farms were 

 characterized by less activity and less livestock, the operators tending 



^ The survey gives the number of hens housed in the fall of 1936. This 

 figure is thus larger than the census figure which is for the number of hens on 

 hand January first, 1935. Ordinarily by that time the flocks have been re- 

 duced by culling and mortality losses. 



' A man work unit roughly represents the production that would normally 

 require one day of man labor under fairly efficient management. 



* Twenty man work units per cow were used in estimating the size of busi- 

 ness instead of the usual 15. It was estimated that five units per cow would 

 cover the labor requirement in growing roughage under efficient management. 



Table 1. Comparison of census and survey records of 12 towns with census 



data for the entire state. 



* This includes all locations of three acres or more in rural areas, which 

 are now occupied by either year-round or summer residents or which have been 

 occupied recently. This is not directly comparable to the census since it 

 includes 242 locations that probably were vacant at the time of year the 

 census was taken. Since the hay on these farms has been harvested in recent 

 years, they were included. 



** Not including orchard acres. 



