1907.] Cost of Producing Farm Products. 



679 



of cultivating chicory, there were certain differences in the 

 methods of collecting and assessing the Excise and Customs 

 duties on chicory which operated to the disadvantage of the 

 home industry. 



The matter was accordingly laid before the Treasury, and the 

 Board are now informed that the Lords Commissioners of H.M. 

 Treasury, after consultation with the Revenue Boards, have 

 arrived at the conclusion that the practical grievance of the 

 home-growers consists in the fact that their chicory is assessed 

 for excise duty on its weight on delivery from the warehouse, 

 including the weight of moisture which it has accumulated 

 during deposit there, while the foreign chicory is assessed for 

 Customs duty on its weight on deposit in the warehouse. To 

 remedy this grievance their Lordships have authorised the 

 Commissioners of Inland Revenue to base the charge of Excise 

 duty not on the delivery weight, but on the computed weight of 

 the chicory at the time of its deposit in the warehouse. 



The Board think that this decision will be received with 

 much satisfaction by those concerned, inasmuch as the British 

 grower of chicory will now be enabled to adopt the process of 

 high-drying, and so escape the duty which he now pays on 

 moisture contained in ordinary kiln-dried chicory. The effect 

 of high-drying would be to decrease the duty from about 60s. 

 to about 49s. per ton of chicory root, and thus to increase the 

 value of an ordinary crop by £^ per acre. 



A number of general estimates have been published from 

 time to time of the cost of producing farm products, but it is 

 probably not too much to say that the 

 ^rSm Products.^ S'^^' i^ajority of farmers have but little 

 knowledge of the actual outlay involved in 

 the different farm operations after allotting to each its proper 

 share of the cost of machinery, labour, interest on capital, etc. ; 

 and although a profit may be obtained on the working of the 

 farm as a whole, it is only by a well-thought out system of 

 book-keeping that a farmer can secure that each of his under- 

 takings is contributing its fair share of profit. In order to help 

 farmers to appreciate the importance of this question, the 



