30 BULLETIN 341, TJ. S. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 



It is a business which may be made successful on a very small area, 

 but which may also constitute part of the business of a farm of any 

 size. This is generally true of very intensive enterprises. 



CROP AREA AND CROP RETURNS IN RELATION TO LABOR INCOME. 



The farmer has often been told that he should keep careful cost- 

 accounting records as a means of determining what enterprises are 

 the more profitable, thus enabling him to increase the magnitude of 

 the more profitable enterprises and eliminate unprofitable ones, 

 thereby increasing his net profits. Many farmers have undertaken to 

 do this, but in many cases the results were such as to be contrary to 

 the farmer's better judgment, and the attempt was often abandoned. 

 We shall here see that this doctrine is more or less of a fallacy. The 

 actual cost of conducting a farm enterprise can not be arrived at b}^ 

 ordinary bookkeeping methods. The profit a farmer makes is not 

 infrequently due to the fact that his business is based partly on enter- 

 prises that the usual methods of cost accounting would show are con- 

 ducted at a loss. The fact is that the real cost of a farm enterprise 

 depends not on the labor and materials devoted to its conduct, but, 

 in part at least, to its relation to the other enterprises maintained on 

 the same farm. Thus, on a farm which produces corn and hay as its 

 principal field crops most of the equipment and labor required for 

 producing wheat are already at hand and would not be fully utilized 

 if wheat were omitted from the rotation. Under such conditions a 

 limited area of wheat might add to the profits of the farm, even if 

 cost accounts showed that it returned less than the current rates of 

 wages to the grower. 



Similarly, a small flocK of hens on the farm will find much of their 

 living in insects, weed seeds, and the grain that would otherwise go 

 to waste about the place. The time devoted to them may be largely 

 that of women and children, who would otherwise not be earning 

 anything. The materials used in constructing the quarters in which 

 they are housed may consist largely of scrap lumber picked up here 

 and there, and which would otherwise have no value. Under such 

 conditions a small flock of hens may add materially to the profit of 

 the farm when cost-accounting records would show them to be a 

 losing proposition. But the story is a different one when the flock 

 becomes so large that it can not be fed largely on waste materials 

 and when the time devoted to it is time that could otherwise be 

 employed at profitable productive labor. 



As will be seen in what follows, there appears to be, under given 

 conditions, a most profitable magnitude for many of the enterprises 

 of these farms. Within certain limits, which can usually be ascer- 

 tained by farm-management survey methods, a farm enterprise may 



