6 
Colorado Experiment Station. 
ager was appointed and a system of cost accounting started in 
March, 1910. 
One of the first things done was to divide the enterprises of 
the farm into two separate classes; those operations and costs di¬ 
rectly chargeable to the growth and care of crops in the field; and 
second, a subdivision which covered all those classes of labor and 
other expenses classifiable under the heading of labor service. Thus 
the farm labor force performed two functions, farm work, and gen¬ 
eral institutional work. 
The farm was divided up into fields and a corrected map con¬ 
structed. Each of the fields was given a number or letter. Any 
expense of any kind put upon the field, whether in money, man or 
horse labor, or the application of water, was charged to the specific 
field. A record was kept of the crops growing on each field in order 
that it might be possible to compute the cost of growing each spe¬ 
cific crop in different years. These records were started in March, 
1910, and have been kept continuously to date. Records have been 
worked up in tabular form showing the cost of taking care of each 
field for each year of the period for which records have been kept. 
* Practically all of the operations in the care of the different crops 
have been kept separately so that we are able to give the total cost 
of caring for the field and the total cost of each individual opera¬ 
tion performed thereon, such as irrigating, seeding, plowing, har¬ 
rowing, harvesting, etc. From these data there has been worked 
out a set of data showing the cost of producing crops. The cost of 
producing the different individual crops has been tabulated and is 
included in this publication. It was not thought advisable to print 
the cost of caring for the different individual fields because it was 
thought that there would be a greater amount of public interest in 
the cost of growing alfalfa, beets, pasture, oats and other crops than 
there would be in the cost of caring for particular fields on the Col¬ 
lege Farm. Since these fields produced the crops the cost of oper¬ 
ating the land for a specific crop is included in the tabular cost of 
that crop. It is not considered that these data compare directly 
with the costs that might be obtained upon privately owned farms 
in the same district. In the first place, the labor of the College 
Farm is limited to a specific number of hours per day, which is sel¬ 
dom the case upon privately owned farms. 
Then again, the College Farm must perform many field opera¬ 
tions purely for appearances. These operations do not increase the 
receipts, but do cost money and man and horse labor. Most pri¬ 
vately owned farms would avoid such expenses because they would 
give no return for capital and labor expended. Aside from these 
features it is thought that considerable comparison with privately 
