FARM MANAGEMENT OX IRRIGATED FARMS 11 
Changes in the price of some of the items used extensively by 
farmers in producing and marketing their crops, such as labor and 
transportation, lagged behind the changes in prices of farm products. 
This is the usual situation. The payment of high wages, taxes, and 
transportation costs with cheap products has been the principal dif- 
ficulty confronting the Yakima Valley farmers. To the eastern 
farmer the high freight rates proved a protection from the shipping in 
of the more bulky and perishable products from the West. 
From this historical study of agriculture on a large number of 
farms in the Yakima Valley, several facts are recognized which are 
of significance to farmers in planning the organization of their farms: 
1. The relative profitableness of many crop enterprises for a single 
year has largely determined the relative importance of these crops 
on farms the following year. 
2. In a period of falling agricultural prices there is more or less 
tendency for farmers to rush from one thing to another in the hope 
of hitting the right thing. This is particularly true of farmers grow- 
ing annual crops and having considerable choice in the selection of 
enterprises each year. It takes these farmers less time to go in or 
out of their principal enterprises than would be required by a live- 
stock man or fruit grower. 
3. Farmers who base their acreage of different crops entirely upon 
the relative returns from these crops for the previous year usually 
defeat their own chances for favorable crop returns, because they 
too often help to accentuate the overproduction or underproduction 
of these commodities. 
4. Those enterprises that have been relatively profitable over a 
period of years have established themselves on most of the farms in 
the area. 
MARKETS AND MARKETING PROBLEMS 
Before a production program is attempted it is important to con- 
sider the possibilities for efficient marketing. This is particularly 
true of such areas as the Yakima Valley, where the principal agri- 
cultural products are grown in large surplus quantities. Farmers 
in this area usually experience greater difficulties with marketing 
than with production. A study of the average crop prices received 
by the farmers visited (Table 6) and the number of farmers receiv- 
ing different prices for their potatoes (Table 7) emphasizes the im- 
portance of satisfactory and dependable prices for the principal 
sources of cash income on general-crop farms in the Yakima Valley. 
Satisfactory prices are largely dependent upon marketing possibilities. 
The importance of studying markets along with the production 
program is emphasized by Henry C. Taylor 2 when he says: 
If markets could be so controlled as to absorb at a satisfactory price anything 
which the farmer may choose to produce and in any quantity which the effort of 
man and the response of nature may determine, the problem of farm manage- 
ment would be greatly simplified. Those who feel this to be a simple task should 
not overlook the fact that it involves the full control of the desires of the con- 
suming public and the power so to adjust these desires that the demand will always 
equal the supply at a price satisfactory to the farmer. 
'Henry C. Taylor, then chief of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, U. S. Department of Agri- 
culture, in address before a conference of western extension workers, Salt Lake City, Utah, Feb. ;>. 1921. 
