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Show I ' rgriguLture H THE COST OF PRODUCING m FARM CROPS M Wc know of no subject porluiniug H to the farm on which there is a grcnt- M cr lack of definite reliable informtt- H tion than the one most fundamental M to success, namely, the cost of pro- H dueing fnrm crops. The nianufnctib H rer can tell exactly what it costs him H each year to produce a plow or binder H or a hat, or a pair of shoes, or an au- H tomobilc; but the farmer can not teli H perhaps' one time in a hundred what H it costs him in any one year, or in H 1 ly series, to produce a bushel of H oorn or one hundred pounds of bui H or pork. H There arc two good reasons for H this lack of definite information. One B is that until comparatively recent H years the profits of farming have not H been mainly in the production of fl crops at alt, but in the increase in the m value of the land, not necessarily bc- H cause of any improvements the farm- M cr may have made, but because of the m advance in values through the growth of the country in the way of increased increas-ed population in the (neighborhood, in lines of transportation and the growth of cities or markets. Another reason is becauso the cost on any farm varies with the season. The crop' of the season is measured largely by the physical condition of the soil, and this depends largely upon up-on the kind of winter preceding, on the, rainfall and heat and their distrl-bution distrl-bution throughout the season. Hence a crop of corn on the same farm may cost twice as much per bushel one year as another, although the cost per acre may not vary greatly. The cost any one year is simply an indication indi-cation of the cost, speaking generally, general-ly, of producing an acre of corn, wheat, or anything else. Again, the cost of produeion varies with the character of the land, and varies largely with the location with reference to latitude and longitude. So that one of the most difficult questions to answer is this fundii-mcntal fundii-mcntal one of the cost of producing a unit of any kind of grain grown on the farm. There is still another reason for this, namely, that farmers had not jriven any special attention to the subject. They have regarded the coat of producing, a bushel of corn, for example, ex-ample, as something that no one can find out. Wc remember a good many years ago that one of our eastern contemporaries as the result of prolonged pro-longed investigation decided that tlu labor cost of producing a bushel of corn in the west was not to exccc.l six and one-fourth cents a bushel. Of course farmers laughed at this proposition; propo-sition; and yet while they knew that even the best of them on the best land and with the most improved machinery could not produce corn at a labor cost of six and one-fourth cents a bushel, they could not tell what it did cost them. Wc have now reached a point in the development of agriculture in the west when farmers' will be required to giva much closer attention to this subject than heretofore. It is one thing to grow corn at a profit Q land with all its virgin fertility unimpaired, worth twnty-fivc dollars an acre and labor at twenty dollars a month with board, and quite a different proposition proposi-tion to grow corn, wheat, or anything else, on land worth one hundred dollars dol-lars an acre and labpr from thirty to thirty-five dollars a month and board. While the subject is one of great difficulty and perplexity, wc arc firmly firm-ly convinced that if farmers would seriously set to work to solve the problem for themselves they would discover that they have often in the past been growing crops at a positive loss, and this would sometimes explain ex-plain why it is that the farmer at the end of the year finds himself so little lit-tle ahead. Now wc do not undertake to solve this problem for farmers in general, nor for any one farmer in particular. Our object at present is simply to call attention to the elements of cost those items which the farmer farm-er must consider in determining whether he is growtng crops at a profit or at a loss. The first clement to be considered is one that many farmers do not consider at all, namely, the use of the land. Renters must necessarily conside. tf s item, because they have to pay the rent; but wc have a great many farmers of the old school who bought their land at an cary date at a low incc, Jive lived on it in conir fort and prre someUr:cL making mnicy, fmctiircs comtiu out about even and son'ttimes running a little behind. These men do not want to sell 1 heir lorms and they are not likely like-ly to figure the use of the land in estimating the cost of producing crops. The rental value of land in the neighborhood is probably a reasonably accurate way of ascertaining ascertain-ing what should be charged for the ti'c of the land. Perhaps a more accurate ac-curate vay is charging the land with the hank interest on the sum for which it would sell, or for which similar sim-ilar lands have been selling. Bank interest is usually about 4 per cent, and no man ought to 'be satisfied with growing crops which yield him less than 4 per cent plus taxes and -maintenance and other costs. Wc regard land that -will yield this as good a long-tinac investment naan usually be made. Whenever land yields more than that, there is danger that it will W pass into the hands of capitalists and ft be farmed by a renter. This, then, is Jm the first clement. H The second item to be considered K is labor. Here, again, there is some if difficulty. It will not do for the W farmer to charge up to the land the R wages per month that he pays for labor, for on the farm this includes also board and washing, and frequent- 11 ly also the keep of a horse to enable 1 the hired hand to take his best girl Eg out riding. It is not easy to figure W the exact cost of board in the coup- K try. Some take as a basis the amount I that the farmer pays out for pro 1 visions during the year and divide this by the number of adults, a child over fourteen counting as an adult and two children under that age as one. This is not a fair estimate, fo: the reason that a great deal of the I farmers's living comes off the farm j istclf. J If the farmer has ascertained in I some way what it costs him for wages W and board, and will estimate the number num-ber of hours per day during the month he or his hired hand gives to any particular field, he can ascertain the cost of la'bor per hour and can charge this to any particular field or crop they may have been cultivating. Another clement of cost is that of animal labor. This is not easy to determine, de-termine, because it involves the keep of the horse for an entire year, whereas in. many cases they do not have work more than seven or eight months. Possibly the charge customary custom-ary in the neighborhood per tca'm per day will approximate it more correct, ly than any estimate the farmer can make as to the actual cost. Then, again, there arc elements of cost in the things that arc actually consumed in the production of the crop, for example, the wear and teat of farm machinery, the cost of seed and twine, the wear and tear of r"a-chinery r"a-chinery used and cost of that hired. , All these items must be figured in and charged to each particular crop before we can even approximate the cost of producing that crop for that year. Some contend that there should be an aJditipnal charge, that of Iqss ai (Continued on page 6) THE COST OF PRODUCING. FARM CROPS. (Continued from page 2) fertility in the soil. If this is charged up, on many farms and especially those given over to excessive grain raising, we arc satisfied that the co,t of growing any particular crop would in most years exceed the market value. The cold facts arc that, taking tak-ing into account the waste of fertility and not taking into account the advance ad-vance in the price of land, a vast number num-ber of farmers in all sections of the United States have been producing grain at a loss for the last half century. cen-tury. It is scarcely fair, however, to charge up loss of fertility to a crop, for the reason that a man who is letting let-ting his farm run down will not bother both-er to make these investigations at all and, therefore, they do not concern him; and for the further reason that any system of farming on a commercial commer-cial scale involves a rotation of crops that will maintain the fertility of the land. Otherwise he is' simply mining not farming the land. If the farmer will sit down and figure out the elements ele-ments of cost that wc have mentioned, men-tioned, he -will have enough difficulty without trying to take into account the indefinite loss which wc have called waste of fertility. Our object in writing the present article is simply to set the farmers to thinking on one of the most important import-ant subjects that can possibly engage their attention. It is one of those things that a farmer can think about when he is plowing corn, milking cows, feeding cattle, or riding to town, when he is sitting up or when he is lying down. How much does ;t cost you to grow a 'bushel of corn; ? bushel of wheat? When you have answered an-swered these questions How mucn docs it cost you to produce a .hundred .hun-dred pounds of beef or pork? o . |