FARM MANAGEMENT, the problem of economics in agricultural production, with the object of introducing therein the same business efficiency which has brought American manufacturing to its present high degree of perfection. While the basis of manufacturing industry has been radically changed by the use of ma chinery and factory organization, thus becoming the subject of executive man agement, agricultural production has not undergone any such basic changes. Farming is still a one-man enterprise and is still largely carried on in the same way in which it was carried on when the handicrafts system of manufacturing obtained. It has been only partially affected by machinery, and that in only certain phases, as in the production of the grain crops, which are now harvested by machinery. Farming, therefore, still remains very much a home industry.
The rapid growth of the urban popu lation, and its demands for farm-grown products, have made improved methods in agricultural production a national prob lem. For this reason the Federal Depart ment of Agriculture and the various State agricultural departments have made efficiency in agricultural production one of their chief aims.
Minnesota, through its agricultural ex periment station, in 1902, was the first State to raise the problem of farm management to the dignity of a special scientific study. Shortly after this sub ject also received the serious considera tion of the Federal Department of Agri culture. Now it has been taken up by most of the other States, and every effort is made, through literature and practical demonstrations, to propagate among the farmers a knowledge of the results ob tained from the experiments made by the demonstration farms established in all parts of the country.
Farm management involves many phases of practical farming; the proper rotation of crops, the comparative value of fertilizers; co-operative organization for the purpose of purchasing seeds and fertilizers, and for the sale of crops at a minimum of loss to profiteering middle men, and, by no means least, a proper system of bookkeeping, whereby the in dividual farmer may know his profits and losses on his various transactions, so that the source of loss may be elim inated. All means to making farming profitable to farmers are considered a legitimate part of the general subject of farm management. The economy of gasoline-driven vehicles for carrying pro duce to market, or of dynamite in dig ging ditches for drainage, are fair illus trations of phases which are shown by actual demonstration. The main object is to eliminate waste and to introduce a scientific efficiency in every department of agricultural production. A fuller dis cussion of this subject will be found in "What is Farm Management?" Bulletin No. 259, issued by the Bureau of Plant Industry, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.