A FIVE-YEAR FARM MANAGEMENT SURVEY IN OHIO. 51 



are very likely to affect one group of farms as much as another in a 

 given year, so that it may be said safely that the variations in crop 

 jdelcls on different farms or groups of farms in an area with similar 

 soil and climatic conditions are due more to variations in the farm 

 practice on the different farms than to the conditions just named, 

 and that the crop yields on the different farms are therefore one 

 indication of the quality of the business conducted on them. 



Receipts per animal unit are considerably affected by the prices 

 received for the live stock and its products, by the time of selling, or 

 by live-stock losses, but within a given area differences in receipts 

 are often the results of actual differences in the quality of the stock 

 or of differences in the live-stock practices on different farms. These 

 practices, however, have been worked out or applied by the farmers 

 after such study of the marketing problem and the problems of 

 feeding and the care of stock as to enable them to reduce live- 

 stock losses to a minimum and to have the right kind of stock to 

 sell at the right time. The receipts per animal unit may therefore 

 safely be said to be a very good indication of the quality of the 

 live-stock part of the farm business. 



The crop yields per acre and receipts per animal unit have been 

 worked out by comparing the crop yields and receipts per animal 

 unit on each farm for each year with the average yields and re- 

 ceipts for all farms for that year. This was done because the average 

 yields of crops arid receipts per animal unit were not uniform from 

 year to year, owing generally to causes not entirely under the 

 control of the farmers, such as weather conditions, insect injuries, 

 or live-stock prices. Thus in this study of the effect of quality of the 

 farm business upon profits, each farm was used as many times as 

 there were yearly records for that farm, or a total of 245 records. 



In Table XVI are shown the effects of the size and the quality of 

 the farm business upon the labor income. In determining the effect 

 of either of those factors, care must be exercised to make sure that 

 the profits shown are not the resultant of a combination of the two 

 factors, rather than of the one it is desired to study. To eliminate 

 this source of error as far as possible, when determining the effect of 

 quality upon farm profits, the records were grouped into three size 

 groups (by crop area) , and each of these into three groups based upon 

 the quality of the business. From these groupings, the effect of the 

 quality of the business upon the average labor income of groups of 

 from 20 to 36 farm records with similar crop acreages may be noted 

 by reading the table from left to right. The effect of the size of the 

 business when the quality is similar may be noted by reading the table 

 downward. 



It will be seen that both size and quality have decided effects upon 

 the labor income, and that quality is fully as important as size. The 



