Dry Farming In Colorado 
21 
work normally required. The item of work covers everything 
except interest or rentals, depreciation and similar items of cost. 
Labor costs differently in different neighborhoods, so that it is 
at present almost impossible to place a fair average value for the 
labor expended. Accordingly there are listed below figures which 
show the number of hours of man labor and the average number 
of hours of horse labor required to produce a few standard crops. 
The following table gives several crops, the number of acres of each 
kvml of crop used, and the amount of labor required per acre per year 
for the production: 
No. of acres No. of man No. of horse 
studied for hours per acre hours per acre 
Kind of crop each crop per year per year 
Corn. 13,000 15 42 
Spring Wheat. 470 12 26 
Winter Wheat. 370 10 23 
Oats. 1,200 15 28 
Barley. 140 10 28 
Rye. 180 12 23 
Oftentimes, by taking advantage of good management prin¬ 
ciples, the same amount of labor can be made to accomplish a 
greater amount of work. For instance, the farmer who arranges 
his cropping in a rotation system so as to require plowing only 
once in three years, and still keeps up his production and soil 
fertility, will produce his crops with much less labor than the 
man whose system requires him to plow all of his tilled land each 
season. It has been shown above that the labor income was in¬ 
creased when the crop acres tended by one man was increased. 
To increase the crop acres per man requires some extra equip¬ 
ment, usually, but more often a better arrangement of work and 
farming system. The largest labor incomes have not been pro¬ 
duced on farms getting the highest yields. They have been pro¬ 
duced, however, on those farms getting just about or a little above 
the average yield. Extra high yields are usually produced too 
expensively to return a profit. The law which economists call 
the law of diminishing returns comes into play. Briefly stated, 
this law is: Extra work or capital applied to an enterprise sooner 
or later reaches a point beyond which the addition of capital or 
labor produces increases in product at greatly increased expense. 
The most profitable businesses on the dry lands have been 
those which had considerable diversity—at least from three to 
five sources of income. These different sources of income can 
be kept up by the growth of live stock, forage crops and cash 
crops. 
