The midland journal., 1916-05-19
DOES THE FARM PAY?
Demonstration Points Out the Differ.
ences in Results Between Good
and Bad Management.

ences in Results Between Good
and Bad Management.
In every community there are a
certain number of farmers who have
found out for themselves how to
make good profit from their farms.
They are now being used by county
agents as practical object lessons for
their less successful neighbors.
Under what is known as the farm
management demonstration plan,
the county agent analyses the sys-
TENS that these men have adopted,
compares them with the practice on
farms that pay less or not at all, and
learns in this way the factors that
make for successful farming in q
given community. He is then in a
position to say: "This is the kind
of farming that pays. If you don't
believe me, look around you. It's
not theory; it's fact"
The demonstrations of this kind
that the Department Of Agriculture,
cooperating with the State colleges
Of agriculture has made already,
afford some striking instances of the
difference in results between good
and bad farm management. Re-
Gently 81 groups of farms in 10
States are studied in order to ascer-
tain what the farmer obtained for
his years work after deducting the
interest at per cent. on the value
of his farm and other capital-in
other words, to find out his labor in
come or wages. In each of these
groups, which included altogether
4,4O0 farms, the conditions were
reasonably similar. In each group
the farmers were divided into five
numerically equal classes according
to their labor incomes.
The Successful Fifth.-It was
found that although the average
labor income for all the groups was
only 1887, the average for the
farmers in the first class-that fifth
of the farmers who did best-was
$1,421. In the second class it was
$642. The last class-the fifth of
the farmers who were least success
ful-got nothing for wages and lost,
on the average, $517. That is to
say, the interest on the amount of
money represented by their farm,
stock, and equipment would have
been $517 more than the farm re-
urned them. It should be borne
in mind in this connection that the
labor income is merely the farmers
wages, and that the family has in
addition, besides interest on invest
ment, the use of the farmhouse and
such fuel and food as. the farm
supplies free of money COST
Other demonstrations have pro-
duced similar results. In almost
any northern community, one-fifth
of the farmers are making approx
mately $1,000 a year more than the
average and $4,000 more than 1.-The
least successful. This is not luck,
nor is it altogether, or even chiefly,
question Of the skill OF the indivi-
dual farmer. Further analysis will
show that the successful men are
following certain methods adapted
to their conditions ana that the un-
successful are not. It is the busi-
ness of the county agents and farm
management demonstrators to ascer-
tain what those methods are and to
point them out.
How this can be done is shown
by study of farm which, for the
sake of convenience, can be called
the Baldwin farm. The owners
labor income one year was minus
$45-his income was $45 less than
the interest on his farm and equip
ment. That year the average labor
income on 1913 farms in the same
community was $3.50 and for the
25 more successful farms $3.50. The
amount of capital represented by the
Baldwin farm was little more than
the average and little less thGh
that OF the best farms. In neither
case, however, was the difference
sufficient to account at all for the
striking difference in income.
Improbable Cows.-There were,
however, other differences which did
account for it. Baldwin had 81
acres in crops, as compared with an
average of 6S and for the best farms
of SO. He fed practically all his
crops to his IL cows and horses.
but the receipts in butter and milk
frmo each of his cows averaged only
$50. On the average farm there
were 6 cows. giving average receipts
of $44, and on best farms 8 cows,
with average receipts from each of
s62. The other farmers with their
larger crop acreage had q surplus
of crops to sell. Baldwin. with as