From these illustrations it becomes apparent that the word " loss " 
in connection with crops may have either of two different meanings. 
The kind of loss suffered by Z when his prospective 35-bushel wheat 
crop was reduced by a hailstorm to a 14-bushel crop, as well as the 
less spectacular but more severe loss which caused the prospects of X 
to shrink from 35 to 8 bushels an acre, is perhaps best termed " crop 
damage " by way of distinguishing it from the kind of loss suffered 
by Y, which was not only crop damage or a diminution in prospective 
yield, but a " financial loss " on the season's operations. 
Adhering to this terminology, it may be said that X and Z suffered 
crop damage on their wheat, which, however, was not sufficiently 
severe to prevent X from breaking even, or Z from making a profit 
on the year's operations. Y, on the other hand, suffered crop damage 
which resulted in a financial loss equal to his entire expenditures in 
connection with the crop which failed to yield a harvest. Similarly 
A, B, and C, in the first illustration, with therr harvests of 20 bushels 
of wheat, 55 bushels of corn, and 350 pounds of cotton, respectively, 
suffered crop damage, although each may have been able to show a 
financial profit instead of a financial loss on his j^ear's operations. 
Even after this attempt at clarification, one of the terms, " crop 
damage," retains a vagueness which it seems impossible entirely to 
remove. The idea of crop damage set forth in the preceding para- 
graphs may be said to be faulty in that it assumes that the best 
crop yet harvested was a perfect or no-damage crop, whereas it may 
well be questioned if on any farm such a crop has yet been reaped. 
It must be further conceded that it would be impracticable to arrive 
at any figures representing the crop damage for a larger area or for 
the country as a whole by using the term as outlined, since it would 
be impossible to take into consideration the maximum yield on each 
individual farm. 
In order to obviate these difficulties and to make it possible to work 
out approximate figures for the amount of crop damage from various 
causes, the United States Department of Agriculture has arbitrarily 
assumed that a crop exceeding by 10 per cent the normal yield is a 
perfect or no-damage crop for the territory in question. The normal 
yield may, in turn, be defined as the yield that the crop reporter 
has in mind as one which in good years actually occurs over extended 
areas, and in percentages of which he reports crop prospects as well 
as crop damages from the different causes. The raising of the 
normal yield by 10 per cent in order to determine the no-damage yield 
is an attempt to make suitable allowance for the fact that the yield 
which the crop reporter, as the result of experience and observation, 
has in mind as a normal yield for his locality is not strictly a perfect 
or no-damage yield. The difference between a perfect or no-damage 
yield and the actual yield is the measure of total crop damage. 
