4 BULLETIN 943, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGEICULTURE. 
Costs not only differ on different farms during the same crop sea- 
son, but they also exhibit a considerable range on any individual 
farm from year to year. The variations on the same farm from 
year to year may be due in part to weather conditions or other crop 
risks, or they may reflect the management of the operator. Even 
the most successful wheat grower may have an ''off year" in wheat 
production, when the enterprise must be counted as a loss. Such a 
man would not suffer such losses annually for several years in suc- 
cession without considering a change to a more profitable enterprise. 
There are men, however, who do continue in the business and who 
do sustain losses from year to year in growing wheat. Others just 
beginning farming may sustain losses in their initial crop seasons. 
Thus in any year a considerable percentage of the producers of a 
given crop have costs which are above the price which is essential 
to stimulate adequate production through a series of years. Obvi- 
ously the growers who habitually sustain losses must improve their 
methods, introduce more profitable enterprises, or take up other 
Hues of business in which they may prove more efficient. 
BASIC FACTORS AND COST ESTIMATES. 
The basic acre-cost factors, such as hours of man and horse labor, 
amounts of manure and fertilizer applied, and quantities of seed and 
twine used, constitute much better measures of cost than the rela- 
tively unstable dollar. If these factors are known, labor rates and 
prices of materials can be applied for any given time, with the result 
that a close approximation of the total cost per acre can be obtained, 
which in turn will make possible a close estimate of the bushel cost 
when the yield per acre is known. 
Where a solid foundation of such basic material is accumulated, it 
should provide a basis for the estimating of approximate acre and 
bushel costs for various products at the end of each crop year, so soon 
as the yield is known and before the crop is marketed. Thus, with 
the progress of the work in this field of investigation and as the 
detailed figures for a series of years are tabulated, the basic cost 
factors become increasingly valuable, because they serve as the basis 
of timely estimates which can not be made with any satisfactory 
degree of accuracy without them. 
METHOD, SCOPE, AND PURPOSE OF PRESENT STUDY. 
The purpose of this bulletin is to give the farmers of the western 
and northern plains, and others interested, as nearly as possible a 
complete statement of the facts concerning cost of wheat production 
for the season of the survey. With this in view, the data have been 
tabulated and presented in the following pages to show the 
