Farm Income 1924 and 1923. 



Prominent among all the other facts concerning Montana's agriculture in the 

 1924 crop season is the fact that total cash returns from sales of crops, livestock 

 and other products greatly exceeded the aggregate of a year ago and were likewise 

 better than any year since the war period. After four years of struggle to adjust 

 stubbornly high production costs to stubbornly low market prices for his principal 

 cash crops, the Montana farmer has suddenly found an unexpected ally in the old 

 law of supply and demand which has lifted the price of wheat, his principal surplus 

 crop to a point where cash returns have left a margin available for cleaning up old 

 indebtedness and to some extent for financing new purchases. 



Cash returns to agriculture are difficult to determine with any great exactness 

 yet estimates can be arrived at, by computing, at average farm prices, from statistics 

 of production of crops and marketings of livestock, the approximate quantities of 

 both sold. Estimates of this nature having been made by the Montana State Depart- 

 ment, for Montana's crops, livestock and livestock products on the same basis for 

 the years 1923 and 1924, it is possible to arrive at a measure of the cash return in 

 both years. 



The value of crops sold from 1923 production and livestock and livestock pro- 

 ducts marketed in 1923 and similar valuations for 1924 were as follows: 

 Year. Cash from Crops. Cash from Livestock, Etc. Total. 



1923 ..$46,784,000 $50,872,000 $ 97,656,000 



1924 74,367,000 53,814,000 128,181,000 



Cash from crops it will be noted increased more than half of their 1923 total 

 compared with a moderate increase for livestock and livestock products, and in 

 1924 reversed position with livestock as making up the larger share of the total of 

 both. 



Table I. 



FARM CASH INCOME 1923 AND 1924. 

 (From Crops and Livestock Items Sold.) 



FROM CROPS SOLD: 



1923. 



1924. 



All wheat 



Oats 



Barley 



Rye 



Flax 



Corn 



All Hay 



Potatoes 



Apples 



Beans 



Peas (Seed and Canning) 



Alfalfa Seed 



Miscellaneous Seed Crops 



Truck Crops Sold 



Miscellaneous Fruits 



Sugar Beets 



Total from Crops Sold 



FROM LIVESTOCK AND LIVESTOCK PRODUCTS: 



Combined Total from Crops and Livestock Sources... | 



$97,656,000! 



$128,181,000 



