U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
crop, and in settling his age-old problem of whether to store or not 
to store. Good business management on the part of the present-day 
farmer requires, in addition to a knowledge of the best methods of 
production, as thorough an understanding as possible of the forces 
which determine the prices of his product; low profits may result as 
well from poor judgment in selling as from poor judgment in growing 
the crop. 
It may be objected that the average farmer can not make use of 
scientific price studies because of their unavoidable technicality; but 
the development in recent years of trained intermediaries in the dis- 
semination of market and other information among farmers and the 
growing up of a more scientific-minded farming class have brought to 
them more and more of the benefits of scientific studies of all kinds. 
To the student of agricultural prices any thorough price study 
brings to light new methods of attacking the problem and new uses 
of old methods. It helps to point out the strength and weakness of 
the various statistical methods, to the end that their fields of usefulness 
may be more clearly defined for those who continue the work. For 
this purpose the mention of trials which have been found to give no 
worth-while results should be of considerable value. 
In any price analysis it is first necessary to determine the area of 
the market, for upon that depends in large measure the selection of 
methods that may be used. The difference in the scope of the 
market for wheat and oats, for example, makes a great difference in 
the characteristics of demand and supply for the two crops. < Upon 
the area of the market and the characteristics of production depend 
the answer to the question as to whether, for the given crop, one may 
assume that there is a normal annual price — an average price at whicn 
the annual supply will be moved from the market. It is difficult to 
assume a normal annual price in the case of wheat, because of the 
influence of foreign production. On the other hand, such an annual 
price may be assumed for a crop which is grown and consumed almost 
entirely within the country for which the study is made and of which 
there is a a single annual supply which becomes available for the 
market within a short period of the year. 
The oat crop of the United States is found to come within this 
classification. Normally the supply of oats in this country is pro- 
duced and mostly consumed within the borders of the Nation. From 
1909 to 1913, and since the war, our exports have averaged not more 
than 2 per cent of the crop and our imports have been still less. 
During the war, however, the demand for oats was abnormal and a 
considerable quantity was exported, causing a temporary widening 
of the market. 
Having decided that oats is a crop that may be treated in a price 
analysis by assuming a normal annual price, the problem is to dis- 
cover the factors which determine this annual price and to measure 
their influence. This requires the bringing together of such fac- 
tors as may be expected to influence the price of oats, the study of 
each by the application of various statistical methods, and the 
selection of those which are found to have" a measurable influence 
for use in developing an estimating formula, by means of which 
the most probable average annual price may be estimated from given 
values of the selected factors. 
