FARM OPERATION In the operation of a farm business it is necessary every year to make decisions that may affect the farm organization. It is just here that the subjects of farm organization and farm operation overlap. A change in prices or the advent of an insect pest may make it desirable or even necessary to reduce the acreage of some crop or even to eliminate it entirely. In any event the operator must decide each year in advance the acreage of each crop to grow, and the numbers of livestock of the various kinds to keep during the year. Fixed rotations are not common on American farms, but in some parts of the country the crops that are grown have more or less of a fixed order. Thus, in localities where corn and the small grains are important, corn usually follows sod, or a previous corn crop ; oats, sometimes wheat, follow corn, and wheat follows oats or wheat. Sod crops, usually timothy and clover (in the north ern and eastern states), follow wheat. Corn may occupy the land one or two years; oats, one year ; wheat, one or two years, and the sod crop from one to several years. This elasticity in rota tion makes changes in the cropping system comparatively easy. American farmers make such changes freely, usually in response to changes in the price of farm products.
Much of the land in Amer ica is so new that relatively little attention has been given to the maintenance of soil fertility. Along the Atlantic coast and in those portions of the southern states where the soils were originally not highly fertile, the practice has developed of using considerable quantities of commercial fertilizers. Little else has been done with a view to maintaining soil fertility, though the subject is one of incessant study on the part of the various state experiment sta tions. During the present century the use of commercial fertil izers has extended westward into the Mississippi valley. Extensive tests are being conducted by experiment stations in the central part of the country to determine best practice in the use of fer tilizers. In the Corn Belt States, where much livestock is kept, farmers have generally depended upon barnyard manure as a means of keeping the soil fertile. The future will undoubtedly see much change in practice in the matter of maintaining soil fertility.
About two-thirds of the farms in the United States are family farms. This means that the labour on them is done largely by members of the farm family. On the remaining third hired labour is regularly employed. Even family farms employ hired labour at harvest time. Restriction of immigration following the World War has resulted in reducing the supply of labour, in consequence of which there has been a marked rise in wages. This has worked a hardship on American farmers, for the prices of farm products have not increased in the same ratio as the rate of wages and the cost of what the farmer has to buy. High wages have been to a marked degree responsible for the greater use of large farm machinery. The result has been a reduction in the number of labourers required on farms, and also a reduction in cost of pro duction.
Very few farmers attempt to keep even ap proximately complete records of their operations. On a family- ' sized farm it is usually possible for the operator to keep in his head the main facts of his business. Records are thus of much less value to him than they would be in the case of a large and complex business. One reason for the relatively few farmers who keep records is the fact that while it is easy enough to keep the daily record it requires considerable expert knowledge to summarize such records and make them useful. Cooperative employment of ex perts to keep farm records has not been as highly developed in America as it has been in certain countries of Europe. A few such cooperative organizations are in operation, particularly in Illinois, where the state experiment station has fathered the movement. The results have been very satisfactory and the movement is ex tending. Nevertheless, on the better conducted farms of the coun try one finds some kind of records kept. On some farms these rec ords are in sufficient detail to permit a financial balance sheet to be made from them.
L. Adams, Farm Management (1921) ; American Bibliography.-R. L. Adams, Farm Management (1921) ; American Farm Economic Association, Proceedings (1910-26) ; Frank App, Farm Economics, Management and Distribution (1924) ; J.'H. Arnold, Farm Management (1919) ; Andrew Boss, Farm Management (1914) ; C. L. Holmes, Economics of Farm Organization and Management (1928) ; Frank William Howe, Farm Economics (1926) ; T. F. Hunt, The Young Farmer; Some Things He Should Know (1912) ; K. F. McMurry and P. E. McNall, Farm Accounting Principles and Problems (1926) ; L. A. Moorhouse, The Management of the Farm (1925) ; W. J. Spillman, Farm Management (1923) . (Lists of the publications of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and of the State Experiment Stations should be consulted, as these publications have not been included in this list.)
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