CHAPTER EIGHT 



FARM MANAGEMENT AND FARM CROPS 



I should regard the most valuable of all arts to be the deriving of a 

 comfortable existence from the smallest area of soil. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



THE farmer, like any other business man, must plan Planning 

 his work wisely in order to be ^uccessful, and to plan ft 

 wisely he must understand the principles of farm man- io . } e c n - 



r sidered 



agement. This old subject has been given a great deal 

 of attention during recent years. 1 Among other things, 

 it takes into account matters like the following : (i) What 

 to raise, whether one kind of crop or several kinds. 

 (2) Whether it will be the more profitable to feed crops 

 to stock or to sell the crops. (3) How to keep up the 

 fertility of the land. 



The selection of the kinds of crops most profitable to The choice 

 raise depends mainly on climate and soil. But the * crops 

 selection should depend also upon the prospect of a good 

 market. As a rule the crops most generally raised in 

 a community sell best, for buyers of particular crops 

 go where they can secure large quantities of those crops. 

 There are advantages in raising several crops at once 

 instead of one, as so many cotton and wheat planters do. 

 If one crop fails, the others, perhaps, will not. More- 

 over, raising several crops permits of rotation, and it 

 distributes the labor of the farm over a longer period 

 of the year, and so helps to do away with periods of 

 overwork and idleness. 



1 Professor W. J. Spillman and Professor G. F. Warren have done 

 much to advance this subject and to make clear its importance. 



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