UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
DEPARTMENT BULLETIN No. 1296 
Washington, D. C. 
January 30, 1925 
A STUDY OF FARM ORGANIZATION IN CENTRAL KANSAS 
By W. E. Grimes, J. A. Hodges, and R. D. Nichols, Kansas State Agricultural 
College; and Jesse W. Tapp, Assista?it Agricultural Economist, Bureau of Agri- 
cultural Economics 
CONTENTS 
Page 
Description of area 1 
Labor and materials used in crop production 11 
Labor and materials used in livestock produc- 
tion 42 
Miscellaneous labor and its relation to the crop 
and live stock labor 53 
Principles governing choice of farm enterprises. 60 
Application of principles governing the choice 
of farm enterprises 65 
To obtain accurate and reliable information regarding the labor 
and material requirements of farms in central Kansas and the rela- 
tions between their crop and livestock enterprises, an intensive study 
of the organization and operation of a number of representative farms 
in McPherson County, for the years 1920 to 1922, inclusive, has been 
made. The information thus acquired forms a basis for judging the 
desirability of different combinations of enterprises, determining 
those combinations which should prove most profitable under vary- 
ing price relations, and indicating ways in which efficiency in the 
various operations may be attained. 
The farmers whose businesses these figures represent supplied the 
data. A field man employed cooperatively by the Bureau of Agri- 
cultural Economics of the United. States Department of Agriculture 
and the Kansas State Agricultural Experiment Station collected the 
data, beginning January 1, 1920. 
DESCRIPTION OF AREA 
McPherson County is centrally located in the eastern portion of the 
wheat belt of Kansas (fig. 1). The farms studied are all in the 
vicinity of McPherson, the county seat. Data from these farms are 
specifically applicable to the wheat-growing regions of central Kansas. 
The farmers of this region have always depended upon wheat as 
their most important source of cash income. They have not grown 
other crops or kept livestock on any extensive scale except when the 
weather has been unusually unfavorable to wheat growing, or when 
the prices of wheat have been exceptionally low. 
1816°— 25t 1 1 
