GRAIN FARMING IN NORTH DAKOTA. 9 
ing 1910. These decreases undoubtedly were due to scarcity of feed, 
which caused the sale or loss of large quantities of breeding stock. 
Both 1900 and 1910 were years of exceeding drought, particularly 
during the growing months of April, May, and June. 
LABOR. 
To determine the number of men required to operate a farm, rep- 
resentative operators were asked as to the amount of labor hired, 
amount of work done by members of the family other than the 
operator, and amount of work done by the operator himself. The 
average farm of 640 acres, with 480 acres in crops, requires approxi- 
mately 8.5 months of time of the operator. Some farms utilize labor 
by other members of the family, and this was calculated on the basis 
of the number of months employed; other farms hire labor by the 
month; the total of these two items of labor average 17.3 months per 
farm. Extra labor was hired by the day during haying, harvesting, 
and thrashing, averaging 84 days per farm, or the equivalent of 2.9 
months. In general, farms using family labor do not hire outside 
labor by the month. The 640-acre farm with 480 acres of crops 
requires the equivalent of approximately four men (including the 
operator) during the season of seven months. Each man employed 
under average farm organization, therefore, does the work equiva- 
lent to that required on 120 acres of crops. More men are required 
during harvest than during plowing and seeding, and scarcely any 
extra labor is needed for a period between planting and harvest. 
The amount of overhead labor—that is, labor necessary to the up- 
keep of the farm but not applied directly to productive enterprises— 
is 16.2 per cent of the total labor utilized on the farm, as estimated by 
40 farm operators. This overhead labor is included in the above 
calculations. 
Labor is unevenly distributed on the grain farms of the State, in- 
asmuch as work on the grain crops is required at about the same time 
for the same operations on all crops. In the case of the four leading 
grains—wheat, oats, barley, and flax—the work of plowing, prepara- 
tion, and seeding is practically completed by May 31, and harvest- 
ing and thrashing are done between August 1 and September 30, 
On many farms a considerable amount of plowing is done in the 
fall, in which case nearly twice as much man labor is required 
during the critical period of late summer and fall as during prepara- 
tion and planting. | 
While the season in North Dakota is comparatively short, not 
much time is lost because of unfavorable weather. On the average 
144 days are available for field work, excluding Sundays, holidays, 
R9815-—19-— Bul. 751——_2 
