42 BULLETIN 648, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
the growing of cotton that the production of corn and oats cost 
more than the market prices of these crops. But a large part of 
the equipment and man and mule labor that must be maintained for 
the growing of cotton is used also in producing the other crops, 
and much of this use is at a time when the equipment and labor 
are not needed for the primary crop. The additional expense 
incurred when corn or oats, in this instance, are added to the crop- 
ping system may be very much less than the amount of the costs 
charged to these crops by the usual cost-accounting methods. It 
may also be found that the secondary crops grown do not materially, 
if at all, reduce the amount of cotton that can be grown with a 
given crew and equipment. The cost of producing any of the usual 
farm crops, therefore, should be considered with a proper view to 
the farm or cropping system as a whole, rather than from the stand- 
point of an independent crop. 
To determine the costs of producing farm products by means of 
daily cost-accounting records is slow and expensive. The present 
study is an attempt to secure by the much quicker survey method, 
applying well-established cost-accounting principles, the costs and 
other factors that are ordinarily obtained only by accounting. It is 
believed that the much larger number of records that may be secured 
by this method sufficiently neutralize any sacrifice in minute accuracy 
of details in individual records. The larger number of records that 
may be obtained greatly increases the number of problems that may 
be studied. 
The essential feature of the method here used is that the overhead 
costs of the farm business are distributed among all of the productive 
enterprises 1 in proportion to the amount of labor expended on each. 
The total costs for the farm of man labor, work-stock labor, annual 
cost of equipment, and interest on the cash required to operate the 
business are determined separately. All other items of cost are 
charged directly to the enterprises to which they apply. 
The total number of days of productive man labor expended on the 
farm for the year is determined. This total is divided into the 
total cost of man labor to ascertain the cost of each day of productive 
Jabor. To determine for any crop the acre cost of man labor, this 
cost per day is multiplied by the number of days of man labor ex- 
pended on an acre of that crop. The per acre share of the interest 
1 The term productive enterprise is used in this investigation to designate all crops, 
live stock, or other source of income that add directly or indirectly to the gross farm 
income. Productive laoor of man or work stock includes all lahor applied directly to a 
productive enterprise. It does not include such labor as repairing buildings, fences, ter- 
races, and ditches, or the care of work stock. The amount of productive labor devoted 
to each enterprise was determined by individual estimates from each farmer, the esti- 
mates being made in detail by separate operations, and later reduced to terms of man 
days and mule days per acre of crop, or unit of other product. 
