112 



THE BUSINESS OF AGRICULTURE 



the growing of onions. The lowest cash-rental 

 price is $22.50 an acre (table 14) on which the 

 farmer gets three crops grown from home-grown 

 seed, or four crops from bought seedUngs. Even 

 with higher rental prices, it usually pays better 

 than appears at first sight, for it is the best land 

 that is usually rented. On the other hand, it 

 definitely does not pay to rent land for onions in 

 exchange for half the crop. Assuming that onions 

 exclusively are grown, from bought seed to the 

 finished product, the renter would lose (in the 

 value of his labor) about $55 every time he grew a 

 crop! Yet there are well-authenticated cases of 

 such agreements. 



A standard tablon of onion nursery should yield 

 from a pound of seed, about 48,000 seedlings for 

 transplanting, enough for eight tahlones of onions. 

 The seedlings themselves are frequently sold, 

 when the buyer gathers them for transplanting in 

 his own fields. The virtually imiversal price is 25 

 cents a vara the width of the tablon. Since there 

 are 32 varas to a tablon, the yield in money is $8 

 per tablon, or $3G0 per acre. Since (table 28) the 

 cost of growing the seedhngs is either $305.73 or 

 $273.64 per acre, the apparent net profit is $54.27 

 or $86.36. (But nobody grows more than a small 

 fraction of an acre.) An individual farmer may 

 realize profits at this rate if the nursery produces 

 as it should. However, the nurseries are said fre- 

 quently to fail wholly and in part, and the farmer 

 may lose instead of gain. Many Indians prefer to 

 buy their seedlings rather than to grow tiiom 

 because of the risk involved. It is impossible to get 

 reliable information on the point, but I judge that 

 in the coram unity as a whole something hke 10 

 percent of expectable onion nursery production 

 fails to materialize. Where bought seed is planted, 

 a 10 percent loss is enough to wipe out the profit. 



A standard tablon of onions allowed to go to seed 

 yields as much as 10 pounds of onion seed. On the 

 other hand sometimes the harvest is entirely lost. 

 The average yield in seed, aU things considered, 

 seems to be about 6 poimds, or at the rate of 270 

 pounds per acre. The 1936 value of this yield, per 

 acre, may be set at $675. A comparison of this 

 figure with the costs shown in table 28 shows a net 

 profit per acre of $366.24, $358.48, or $336.75, 

 depending on from what the onions for the seed 

 are grown. (But again, onion seed is produced in 

 quantities much smaller than acres.) 



An individual farmer who grows seedlings, 

 onions, and onion seed exclusively for a year profits 

 as follows from an acre of land, assuming that he 

 grows the same proportions of each that are shown 

 on chart 4: 



Seedlings, 0.071 acre at $86.36 aj $6.13 



Onions, 0.512 acre at $25.91 13. 27 



Seed, 0.017 acre at $366.24 6. 23 



Total, 1 acre.. 25. 63 



He can do better than this if he manages his agri- 

 culture so that less land is idle between crops, 

 while awaiting seedUngs to transplant, etc. But 

 it is unlikely that anybody is so efficient that his 

 profits rise to beyond about $40. Looking at it in 

 this way, obviously a rental of from $22.50 to 

 $33.75 for the acre (table 14) leaves a slim margin 

 of net profit. 



GARLIC 



Garlic costs (table 31) are all charged to labor, 

 since the seed is almost invariably home-grown. 

 In a standard tablon are planted 2,400 sections of 

 garlic taken from the best heads of the previous 

 harvest, which average 10 sections each (the yield, 

 in most general terms, being thus 10 for 1). A 

 few of the best heads have only large sections, all 

 suitable for planting; the next best, from which 

 most seed comes, have five or six large sections 

 (for planting) and four or five small ones (con- 

 sumed or sold). So, roughly 10 percent must be 

 added to the labor cost to supply the seed. 



The work of braiding is usually done by the 

 family during time that would otherwise not be 

 economically used: evenings and during rainy 

 spells, etc. Not counting the time needed for 

 braiding, the cost comes to about $85.32 an acre. 



All garhc that is planted normally produces. A 

 good harvest, usuaUy on "new" land rented from 

 Lachnos, produces imiformly large heads; a 

 medium harvest produces medium-sized heads; 

 and a poor harvest yields very small heads. The 

 large and medium sizes are bunched for sale, 60 

 heads to a bunch; and an acre yields 1,800 bunches. 

 A poor harvest of small heads (sold by the measure 

 sufficiently uniformly so that they may be treated 

 as if they were sold by the pound) produces about 

 2,250 pounds per acre. Calculated from the 



