24 BULLETIN 994, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



labor that has gone into the enterprise. The point is made that the 

 going rate of wages paid to hired men is not a fair figure to cover 

 the management and supervision given by the farm proprietor. In 

 instances where hired managers are employed the total cost of 

 their employment is distributed as a labor cost over the various 

 enterprises, so that this question usually arises only with reference 

 to the work of a proprietor. 



The position is taken by the Office of Farm Management and 

 Farm Economics, and by most authorities, that the net returns 

 from an enterprise or from the farm as a whole should pay for the 

 supervision of the proprietor, and that the work he does should be 

 counted as a charge at what such service could have been hired for. 

 If a separate estimate of the value of the farmer's time is used as a 

 supervisory charge, there is always a question as to the validity of 

 the estimate made, and in some instances this estimate may distort 

 the cost so that the results will be valueless for comparison. 



Fertility. — Not only have questions been raised as to the method 

 of charging crops with the manure applied to them, and at the 

 same time crediting it to the live stock responsible for its production, 

 but the point has been made that in estimating the costs of producing 

 crops an allowance should be made for the value of the fertility 

 consumed in production, regardless of whether any fertilizer is applied. 



In instances where commercial fertilizer is used the practice has 

 been to charge the first crop with all or a share of the actual cash cost, 

 depending on the rate of availability of the fertilizer. In the case of 

 farm manure the increase in returns due to the application of the 

 manure is very difficult to estimate accurately, as the increase 

 varies greatly with the kind of soil, the topography of the farm, 

 the present yielding qualities of the land, the kind of manure, the 

 time of year applied, the rate of application, the manner of handling 

 in the barnyard, and other factors that complicate the problem. 



It is apparent that an application of manure or fertilizer to a 

 crop in one year provides a residue that is made available to succeed- 

 ing crops through a term of years. In the case of barnyard manure 

 it has been arbitrarily decided, where the farm is operated on a 

 more or less definite rotation plan, to apportion the manure expense 

 on th-3 basis of either 50, 30, and 20 per cent over three years, or 

 40, 30, 20, and 10 per cent over four years, depending somewhat 

 upon the nature of the soil. In the case of commercial fertilizer, 

 the more quickly acting fertilizers, such as nitrate of soda, are often 

 charged as an annual expense, but lime and rock phosphate are 

 usually charged over a four or five year period. More definite 

 results from experimental work will probably give a more definite 

 basis for this charge in the future than exists at the present time. 



