432 



Cost of Harvesting Potatoes. 



[Aug., 



invited farmers to fill up a Questionnaire giving particulars of 

 the soil, crop, acreage, method of lifting, and the man and horse 

 power employed. Inspectors of the Horticultural Division 

 co-operated with farmers in obtaining these figures. As a result 

 the Ministry received reports of the cost of harvesting 703 acres 

 of potatoes on 50 separate holdings; the information in 15 cases 

 relating to 104 acres was not of sufficient value for the purpose, 

 and was disregarded. 



Bearing in mind the fact that a small holder might not be in 

 the position to use the same method of lifting as that employed 

 by a large potato farmer, an attempt was made, (1) to find out 

 what constituted a " working unit " for each system, e.g., the 

 number of horses and amount of labour to keep one plough or 

 one digger at work; (2) to determine the cost of keeping one of 

 these units at work for one day ; and (3) to ascertain the quantity 

 of potatoes lifted by each unit per day. 



It was expected that the cost of lifting the potatoes would vary 

 with the different classes of soil, seeing that both the size of the 

 crop and ease of working the soil would be largely influenced 

 by its texture. The figures for each class of soil were tabulated 

 Tinder three headings. Heavy Soils, Medium Soils, and Light 

 Soils. From these figures it was seen that a working unit could 

 raise in a day a larger quantity of potatoes on medium soils than 

 on heavy soils, whilst on light sands the tonnage raised per day 

 was slightly less than on medium loams. The latter is probably 

 due to the fact that the medium soils yield heavier crops than 

 do sands. 



Lifting by the Fork. — From the information received, it 

 was impossible to draw any conclusions as to what constituted 

 a " working unit " in the case of the fork. For instance, one 

 farmer employed 7 labourers with forks to 3 women gatherers; 

 another farmer, 2 labourers with forks to 2 boys ; and a third 

 12 labourers with forks to 12 gatherers. Neither did the figures 

 obtained give any definite information of the acreage lifted per 

 day by one man with fork. 



Lifting by the Plough. — Similarly, the figures obtained 

 where the plough was used were on the whole so unsatisfactory 

 that no safe conclusions could be drawn. In one case, however, 

 the return received showed that the farmer had been to some 

 pains to prepare a clear and accurate statement, and the results 

 are interesting as showing that with a good crop and efficient 

 organisation the cost of harvesting can be kept low. 



