A STUDY OF FACTORS INFLUENCING THE YIELD OF POTATOES 1233 



It might be presumed that growers of the larger acreages in each region 

 would be more inclined to use planters than those having a smaller acreage. 

 Whether this was true in these four regions is shown in table 65 : 



TABLE 65. RELATION OF SIZE OF POTATO ACREAGE TO METHOD OF PLANTING 



It is evident that growers in none of these regions find it unprofitable to 

 plant by machine so far as average acreage of the crop is concerned. In 

 Steuben and Monroe Counties there was a tendency to use more planters 

 on the larger acreages. The 2 per cent of acreage on Long Island planted 

 by hand averaged higher per farm than the balance which was machine- 

 planted. The same relation held with the 18 per cent of hand-planted 

 acreage in Franklin and Clinton Counties. It is clear, from tables 64 

 and 65, that the average potato acreage per farm, considered in the light 

 of percentage of total acreage planted by hand and by machine in each 

 region, has no bearing on the extent of machine planting in these four 

 regions. 



As indicated in table 64, two types of planters were commonly used. 

 One was of the picker type, employing only one man, while the other 

 was usually of the platform type and required two men for its opera- 

 tion. As the second man on a two-man planter is charged with the duty of 

 seeing that there are no skips, better stands of potatoes are expected from 

 this type of planter. It is shown in table 64 that, whereas about three- 

 fourths of the Long Island acreage was planted with one-man planters, 

 the two-man type predominated in the other three regions. 



A study of the relative yields obtained from the acreage planted with each 

 type in the four regions is shown in table 66. Of the total of 635 growers 

 using machine planters about one-half of all the farmers visited the 

 numbers using each type of planter were approximately equal. The 

 weighted averages in table 66 show that with about the same amount of 

 seed per acre used in each planter, the yield was 19.3 bushels per acre 

 higher from the acreage planted with the one-man planter. This average 

 is not a true criterion of the two types of planters, however, because a 

 large proportion of the total machine-planted acreage was on Long Island, 



