324 



Farm Labour Organization. 



[July, 



results to the state of the fields adjoining. The term " indirectly 

 productive " used by some American agricultural economists is 

 therefore preferred as a definition of establishment work. 



In a general way the graph shows the relative importance 

 of the labour requirements of each line of production under this 

 type of farming. Naturally the labour on the arable stands out 

 prominently. What is more important to notice, and this is the 

 main feature of the graph, is how the arable and the two stock 

 departments fulfil the condition of equalizing the labour demands 

 when the work, as here, is efficiently organized. During the 

 busy months in the year on the land, on this farm — May, June, 

 July, August, September, October and November — the stock 

 are on grass and more or less shifting for themselves, thus 

 reducing their labour requirements to a minimum, and the 

 labour on sheep is also comparatively small, while during the 

 winter months and early spring, when arable land operations 

 are curtailed by weather conditions, etc., the labour required 

 for all the classes of stock is considerably increased, and 

 with the " granary " work — threshing, etc. — makes up for 

 the diminished demand on the land. Further, winter is the 

 period of the year when ditching, hedging, fencing, road repairs 

 and other establishment works can be carried out without dis- 

 turbing the essential work for crops and stock. 



In organizing labour, therefore, the unit of organization is 

 the farm itself, not its individual parts. Each line of produc- 

 tion must be correlated and linked up with the others. Thus, 

 the efficient manager of farm labour must not only consider 

 the labour for his crop rotation, but what is equally imperative 

 the relation of stock labour to that required for the crops, in 

 order that he may supplement where necessary the work on the 

 land, and so ensure a continuous demand on the labour at his 

 disposal. The graph (Fig. 1) shows fairly conclusively that for 

 this style of farming arable is dependent to a large extent on 

 the stock to regulate the labour requirements. 



To enable a farmer to organize labour effectively a thorough 

 knowledge of crops and stock is essential. This phase of farm 

 management is outside the scope of this article. A short dis- 

 cussion of the importance of doing work at the right time will 

 not, however, be out of place. Certain classes of work must have 

 preference over others at any given time. It will be at once 

 recognized that the feeding of stock cannot be put off; the work 

 at seed time and harvest, and the thinning of root crops are all 

 operations which must be completed within a limited period of 



