UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



BULLETIN No. 997 



JZ&'&j-u 



•ijyV Joint Contribution from the Office of Farm Management and *Vif " 

 ii? Farm Economics, H. C. TAYLOR, Chief; Bureau of Public ?S 



Roads, THOS. H. MacDONALD, Chief; and Bureau o f ^Vr^"^\SL 



Animal Industry, JOHN R. MOHLER, Chief. 



Washington, D. C. 



December 21, 1921 



THE COST AND UTILIZATION OF POWER ON FARMS 

 WHERE TRACTORS ARE OWNED. 



286 Farms — Ohio, Indiana, Illinois — 1920. 



By H. R. Tollet, Agricultural Engineer, and L. A. Rbynoldson, Junior Farm 



Economist. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction 1 



Summary 2 



Areas in which investigation was made 5 



Size and age of tractors 9 



Workstock 10 



Size of farm 11 



Size of farm and size of tractor 12 



Workstock on farms of different sizes 12 



Work done by tractors 13 



Drawbar work 15 



Belt work 24 



Custom work 25 



Work done by horses 26 



Horse labor equivalent of tractor work. 34 



Proportion of work done by horses and by 



tractors 35 



Number of workstock used on different opera- 

 tions 37 



Cost of keeping work stock 39 



Cost of using tractors 45 



Reliability of tractors 53 



Cost of power for different operations as fur- 

 nished by horses and by tractors 54 



Annual cost of power for drawbar work 54 



Changes in size of f arm and number of work- 

 stock after purchase of tractors 56 



Increase in investment due to purchase of 



tractors 59 



Saving of man labor due to use of tractors 60 



INTRODUCTION. 



During October and November of 1920 the Bureau of Animal 

 Industry, the Office of Farm Management and Farm Economics, 

 and the Bureau of Public Roads of the United States Department 

 of Agriculture- made an investigation of the cost and utilization of 

 power on representative farms where tractors are owned in Ohio, 

 Indiana, and Illinois. Two hundred and eighty-six farmers in these 

 States who had been using tractors for a year or more were inter- 



Note. — Special credit is due to W. R. Humphries, Bureau of Public Roads, for valuable assistance in 

 collecting and in supervising the tabulation of the data presented in this bulletin. 



Acknowledgement is also due to O. A. Juve, Office of Farm Management and Farm Economics, M. A. 

 R. Kelley, Bureau of Public Roads, and G. C. Dignan, Bureau of Animal Industry, for assistance in col- 

 lecting the data, and to Prof. J. I. Falconer, University of Ohio, Prof. O. G. Lloyd, Purdue University, 

 and Prof. W. F. Handschin, University of Illinois, for assistance in the selection of the areas studied and 

 for many courtesies to the investigators while the work was in progress. 

 56390°— 21— Bull. 997 1 



