M.—AGRICULTURE. 2.05 
then to trade with one department of his farm against another is to 
involve himself in paper transactions which have no foundation in 
fact, and which may lead to disastrous conelusions. To take, for 
example, the cost of milk production. It is usual to argue that hay 
consumed by the cow should be charged at its market price. It may 
well be that in consequence of a temporary or of a local demand it 
will pay a farmer better to sell hay rather than to produce milk, and 
one of the main functions of book-keeping is to enable him to make 
a decision on such points as this. But he cannot expect to have 
it both ways; if he sells hay he cannot produce milk, and vice versa. 
Many farmers contract at summer prices for their winter’s supply of 
feeding stuffs, but a man who has bought linseed cake at a pound 
per ton less than the price current at the time when he is consuming 
it would hardly think of charging it to bullocks at any other price 
than that which he actually paid, and it is this figure, the actual cost 
to him, which must be the measure of the value of all raw materials, 
whether they be bought in the market, or whether, for the sake of 
convenience and economy, they be grown on the farm. 
— see eee eS SL eee 
— 
Lastly, I want to urge, and particularly before a gathering such 
as this, the importance of agricultural economics in agricultural 
education. The fact is realised, no doubt, by many teachers, but until 
a sufficient body of data bearing on the study of farm management can 
be made available to them it is impossible for them to give to the 
teaching of practical agriculture that solid economic basis which is 
fundamental, and the teacher is driven to include in his instruction 
much to which the economic test has never been applied and to exclude 
more for which no basis for teaching exists at all. Given the requisite 
body of information it would not only be possible but necessary to 
recast the whole foundations upon which the teaching of practical 
agriculture rests. 
I am not one of the few who appear to derive satisfaction from 
making comparisons unfavourable to British agriculture with that of 
other countries, but, when we look at the work which is being done 
in the United States, in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and even in 
Russia before the War, it is surprising to reflect that the agriculturists 
of the nation which produced Adam Smith, Ricardo, and John Stuart 
Mill should have been so slow to realise the need for a fuller organisation 
for the study of agricultural economics. 
