802 



Labour on the Farm. 



[Dec, 



The group of farms with the lowest proportion of grass land 

 has the highest labour bill per acre. This was to be expected, 

 but the reduction of 50 per cent, in the labour bill which occurs 

 in the next group, was not anticipated. When the figures for 

 the other groups, with a still higher proportion of grass land, 

 are examined, it will be realised that (he proportion of grass, 

 although influencing the labour bill, is not by any means the 

 only factor. The character of the farming undertaken on the 

 farms in the last two groups supplied the reason for the labour 

 bill figures. The farms in the last group are all grass land dairy 

 farms where large milking herds are kept and milk is produced 

 on highly intensive lines. Consequently the labour bill on these 

 farms is high. The fourth group, on the other hand, is com- 

 posed almost entirely of farms where either summer grazing of 

 bullocks or the breeding of sheep is the main branch followed, 

 and as the labour requirements of these classes of stock are 

 small, the labour bill per acre is correspondingly low. 



It would appear, therefore, that the amount of the labour bill 

 on any particular farm, provided the labour is organised to the 

 best advantage J is determined by the interaction of at least three 

 factors : — 



1. The size of the farm. 



2. The proportion of the land under gi^ass. 



3. The system of farming adopted. 



Of these, the third is probably the most important. 



System ol Farming Adopted. — On most of the farms which 

 have been costed labour and time sheets have been kept from 

 which it has been found possible to extract each year the number 

 of days of manual, horse or tractor labour einployed per acre of 

 each individual crop, or field, or per head of each variety of 

 stock. In Table VII are given the average results obtained on 

 all farms costed from 1918 to 1922, while, for the sake of com- 

 parison the figures quoted by Bridges as obtained from an East 

 Midlands farm in 1918 are also given.* 



When it is remembered that the figures quoted by Bridges for 

 the grain and pulse crops are exclusive of the necessary work for 

 threshing and delivering, that on this East Midland farm of 

 965 acres a large amount of steam cultivation, with its accom- 

 panying comparatively small amount of manual labour, was 

 carried out on much of the wheat, oats and barley, and that 

 such operations as hedging, fencing, draining, ditching, road 



* See tliis Journal, July, 1922, ''Labour nri.'aniH;rtiun on an East Midlands 

 Farm, by Archibald Bridges." 



