FARM MANAGEMENT PRACTICE OF CHESTER COUNTY, PA. 81 



The fourth column of this table shows that within certain limits 

 the work units per man bears a close relation to the size of the farm. 

 It is on the farms of 100 acres or less that the small number of pro- 

 ductive work units per man is found. For farms larger than this 

 there does not appear to be much relation between size of farm and 

 productive work units per man. In other words, with the type of 

 farming and the general farm methods which prevail here, the farm 

 of about 100 acres appears to be the minimum efficient economic unit 

 from the standpoint of the proportion of productive work as com- 

 pared with miscellaneous work. 



FARM ORGANIZATION. 



We have already seen that in the Chester County survey area most 

 of the farms are more largely devoted to dairying than to any other 

 enterprise. Yet only 157 of the 378 farms conducted by their owners 

 had sufficient income from dairy products to be classed as real dairy 

 farms. In other words, although this is distinctly a dairy region it 

 is by no means exclusively so. There is considerable diversity in the 

 local farming. 



DIVERSITY INDEX. 



In order to ascertain to what degree this diversification of enter- 

 prises is justified by local experience, it is desirable to have a definite 

 means of measuring the degree of diversification on a farm. The 

 diversity index furnishes such a means. When the enterprises on a 

 farm are all equally important or of equal magnitude the number of 

 these enterprises may be used as the measure of diversity. Thus, if a 

 farm business is based on three equally important enterprises, its 

 degree of diversity is said to be three. But if the enterprises on a 

 farm are of unequal magnitude, the degree of diversity may be deter- 

 mined as follows: First, find the sum of the magnitudes of all the 

 enterprises (in most cases the receipts from an enterprise may be 

 taken as its magnitude), 1 divide the magnitude of each enterprise by 

 the sum above mentioned, square each of the quotients, and divide 

 unity by the sum of these squares. The result is the diversity index. 



In Table XL VII the 378 owner farms are divided into groups based 

 on the degree of diversity of their business. Seventy-nine of these 

 farms had a degree of diversity less than 3. Their average labor 

 income, when adjusted to eliminate the effect of size of farm, was 18 

 per cent below the general average. On 107 farms the diversity index 

 was from 3 to 3.9. Their labor income was 10 per cent below the 

 general average. 



1 The most accurate measure of the magnitude of an enterprise is the total cost of its 

 conduct, including interest, depreciation, wages, repairs, materials, etc. 



14138°— Bull. 341—16 6 



