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Show Dry -Farmers Are Adopting Power Methods Continued pressure for cost reduction re-duction in dry-farming in Utah is resulting not only in the adoption of more economical uses of labor and equipment but also in a notable nota-ble tendency toward power farming much of which is done on a custom basis. This briefly summarizes the findings find-ings of a study made recently by P. V. Cardon and published in Bulletin 215 of the Utah Agricultural Experiment Exper-iment Station, which is just off the press. After tracing the efforts of Utah dry-farmers during the last quar-. ter of a century to reduce costs, the author presents a summary of cost records kept during 1926 and 1927 by 40 dry-farmers in Cache, Box Elder, Tooele, Juab Counties. A total of 11,054 acres oi land is represented in the study, the farms averaging in size jij.z acres, inese records reveal mny interesting facts pertaining to dry-farming practices in Utah. It is shown, for example. that a little over three-fourths of the dry-farmer's investment is in land, 16.09 in equipment and only 7.74 in buildings. His average investment in-vestment in lnd totals $12,285.92; in equipment, $2,728.28; and in buildings, $319. This total investment invest-ment represents an average acre investment of $42.42 in land, $7.17 in equipment, and $4.44 in buildings. build-ings. The labor cost, exclusive of hauling, haul-ing, is shown to have been $5.85 an acre where horse outfits were used against $3.68 an acre for tractor outfits. Hauling cost one cent a bushel for each mile hauled. The total acre-cost including labor, la-bor, hauling, interest on investment, depreceiation on buildings and equipment, taxes, insurance, supplies, sup-plies, etc. was $16.67. With a gross income of $25.09 an acre, based on an average yield or 22.01 bushels selling at $1.14 a bushel, bush-el, the net return from each crop grown averaged $4.21 an acre. This is equivalent, says the bulletin to 7.8 per cent return on an average total acre-investment of $54.03. "This study," the author states, "takes no account of the Utah dry-farmer's dry-farmer's expense in maintaing his town home." From his findings Director Cardon concludes that at the present time there is a tendency toward larger dry-farms and toward the operation of small units on a custom basis. Copies of this publcation (Bulletin (Bulle-tin No. 215) may be secured without with-out cost by writing to the Division of Publications, Utah Experiment Station, Logan, Utah. |