12 OUTLINES OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



20. How may we get the maximum performance from hilly lands ? 

 Do the same general methods apply here as in previous sections, viz., 

 choosing a suitable crop, adapting our agricultural methods to the 

 character of the land, and actually remaking the land? What is 

 likely to be the economic order of their application ? Illustrate by 

 the experience of America, Italy, and China. 



21. Why did population spread westward, as soon as means of 

 transportation were made available, instead of using the eastern sea- 

 board more fully? Why not raise all the perishable products for 

 New York City in the adjoining counties? Why have American 

 farmers gone to Western Canada ? 



22. State the law of diminishing returns from land. Is it a part 

 of the working knowledge of the successful farmer? How does he 

 phrase it? Do some farmers ignore the principle? Entirely? In 

 part? 



23. Under what circumstances will later applications of labor and 

 capital to land yield a larger return than those which have gone before ? 



24. Does this fact constitute a denial of the principle of diminish- 

 ing returns ? State the law in such a form as to cover such cases fully. 



25. What is intensive cultivation? the intensive margin of culti- 

 vation ? Give local illustrations. 



26. What is extensive cultivation ? the extensive margin of culti- 

 vation ? Illustrate. 



27. Are these relative or absolute terms? When is cultivation 

 absolutely extensive? 



28. Must all agriculture be somewhat extensive ? somewhat inten- 

 sive ? Is the really significant question whether a particular outlay 

 be made intensively or extensively ? 



29. Popular writers and speakers are constantly referring to 

 diminishing returns in agriculture as though it were the same thing 

 as the decline in the fertility of land. Show carefully that this is not 

 the case. Again state the law so as to exclude the possibility of such 

 a blunder in interpreting it. 



30. Now show the effect which declining fertility will have upon 

 the operation of the law of diminishing returns from land. 



31. Is scientific agriculture a means of getting a reprieve from the 

 effects of the law of diminishing returns from land ? Explain just 

 what is the relationship of the two. Show that your answer to this 

 question is consistent with that of the previous case. 



32. Does conservation mean saving from use? What does it 

 mean ? 



33. Outline a policy of conservation of farming land which is 

 economically sound today. Does it take account of the principle of 

 diminishing returns from land farmed intensively ? 



