Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 103, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1916 — DIVERSIFICATION IS ESSENTIAL ON FARM [ARTICLE]

DIVERSIFICATION IS ESSENTIAL ON FARM

Good Yields From Crops and Live Stock Are Necessary for Paying Business. (By S. B. CLELAND, Minnesota Expert- ' ment Station.) With each new era visited or old area revisited by men doing the farm management demonstration work it becomes more and more apparent that a good size of business, good yields from crops and from live stock and a proper diversification of the farm business are all essential to success in farming. A recent demonstration >shows this in striking fashion. The most profitable ten farms in a certain locality were compared with the average of some 60 farms visited and In all respects mentioned were found to be better than the average. In the matter of size, whether considering total acreage, acreage in crops or acreage in potatoes, these ten farms averaged 50 per cent larger than the average of the locality. In returns

from live stock the ten farms showed ten per cent more income from each animal than the average. The crops were better; especially potatoes, the most important crop, which went 122 bushels to the acre, against an average yield of 99 bushels. The farm business was so arranged on these ten good farms that every man and every horse was able to cover from ten to twenty per cent more ground than the average. , As a result of these methods the ten farms mentioned showed an average labor Income of nearly 11,400, while the average’man in the locality had a labor income of only |414. This is all the more striking when one considers that a man’s labor income is not merely what he makes above expenses, but in what is left as pay for his year’s time over Interest on his investment, which, in the case of the larger farms of the t?n men mentioned, would be a heavier charge than the average. ~