FARM MANAGEMENT STUDY OF COTTON FARMS. 3 



lord or operator also furnishes I he learns and equipment necessary 

 for the cultivation of the cropper's crops and pays for the ginning 

 of one-half the cotton. In the case of the independent cropper the 

 latter is the manager or operator of the whole farm. In other cases 

 the cropper occupies only a portion of the farm and is supervised to 

 a greater or lesser extent by the owner operator. 



Owner, part rented out. — Several farms were found in the survey 

 in which a part of the land owned by the operators was rented out. 

 Such farms are classified as " owner, part rented out," but for the 

 purpose of this survey this land that was rented out was entirely 

 eliminated from the business of the owners. 



Available days. — Records were obtained from 28 farms, showing 

 the number of days, by months, that it was possible to do field work. 

 These records were averaged, from which it was found that 211 days 

 per year could be utilized for field labor. 



Wage labor. — This term is used to designate the hired or paid 

 labor per farm as distinct from the labor performed by the operator 

 himself, or that of his family, or labor performed by croppers. The 

 term " owner-wage " indicates that a farm is operated by its owner 

 with wage labor and without cropper labor. 



Man-labor cost. — This cost is composed of four component parts, 

 namely, cost of hired or paid labor, value of family labor, whether 

 actually paid for or not, value of the operator's own labor, and value 

 of rations bought for or furnished to laborers. 



Diversity index. — In order to ascertain to what degree diversifica- 

 tion of enterprise is justified by local experience, it is desirable to 

 have a definite means of measuring the degree of diversification on a 

 farm. Such a measure may be determined as follows: First, find 

 the sum of the magnitudes of all the farm enterprises (cost of pro- 

 duction was used as representing magnitude), 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. 



Animal unit. — An animal unit is a mature horse or cow or as many 

 smaller animals as required the equivalent in feed of a horse or cow, 

 namely, 2 head of young cattle or colts, 5 hogs, 10 pigs, 7 sheep, or 

 100 hens. 



Farm income. — The farm income is the difference between the total 

 receipts and total expenses of the farm, not including interest on 

 investment and value of operator's labor. 



Income above rent. — This income is the amount that the operator 

 actually receives for his labor after deducting the rent of the land 

 and interest on his w-orking capital, this interest being computed on 

 the basis of the current rate of interest on vendor's lien notes, which is 



