THE COST OF PRODUCING COTTON. eg 
In general, it may bestated that as the yield of lint cotton increases 
on these farms the net cost per acre increases, while the net cost per 
pound decreases. Within the limit reached by these growers. 
increasing the yield is an important factor in reducing the unit cost, 
The point of diminishing returns has not been reached by any of the 
» groups. The 24 farms having a yield of 100 pounds of lint per acre 
and under had a net cost per acre of $49.30 and a net cost per pound 
of 57 cents; whereas the 53 farms producing over 300 pounds of lint 
per acre had a net cost of $80.65 per acre and a net cost per pound of 
22 cents. 
Some of the groups (Table XII) contain only a few farms, hence 
the costs for these groups can not properly be compared with groups 
including a large number of farms. Where comparison can be made 
it would appear that the farms producing the larger acreages have 
the lower unit costs. This correlation is particularly noticeable in 
comparing the farms producing 20 acres of cotton and under with 
those which had 20 plus to 40 acres. With a few exceptions, this 
rule holds true for the farms producing the higher yields up to farms 
having more than one hundred acres of cotton. It should be pointed 
out that it does not necessarily follow, because unit cost goes down 
as size of farm increases, that the cost is altogether controlled by 
size of farm. The human factor comes into play here, and it may be 
that the reduction in cost on the larger farms is attributable in con- 
siderable measure to the superior ability of their operators. 
NORMAL TIME REQUIRED FOR VARIOUS OPERATIONS. 
The various operations involved in the production of cotton will 
be taken singly in succeeding pages. It might be well first to con- 
sider these operations as a whole. The interest of the grower is con- 
cerned chiefly with the more common crew sizes, with the number of 
acres that can be covered in a normal day’s work, and with the sea- 
sonal distribution of the different classes of work. Table XIII 
presents a summary of these items. 
It has been shown that the man and mule labor required in cotton 
production constitutes a very important part of the total cost of 
growing the crop. It would, therefore, appear to be exceedingly 
desirable to analyze these two factors for the purpose of presenting 
the normal time devoted to the different labor operations that were 
reported for the ten districts under consideration. There was quite 
a wide variation in the methods employed in the respective areas. 
There was also an appreciable range in the time required for these 
operations. The latter may be explained in part by variations in 
the crew size, the character of the implements used, and the number 
of times the area may have been worked. A brief review of the tables 
which contain an analysis of the man and mule labor requirements 
397°—20——3 
