Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1917 — WASTE LAND EXPENSIVE [ARTICLE]

WASTE LAND EXPENSIVE

Every acre of nonproducing tillable lane* should be put to work or sold, says a new publication of the department, Farmers' Bulletin 745. Many farmers would make more money if their business were larger, but the size of a farm, from a financial standpoint, is measured not by the number of acres embraced in*it but by the number that are producing crops, pasturing animals economically, or supporting a growth of marketable forest products. Nonproductive acres are loafer acres, and the money tied up in them is dead capital. On every farm, however, there are certain areas necessarily devoted to nonproductive purposes. Fences, ditches, lanes, and building lots produce nothing themselves, but they are frequently essential production on the rest of the farm. Nevertheless, they may occupy in the aggregate to a con siderable percentage of the available land. It is a part of efficient farm management to see to it that this percentage is no higher than necessary. In this connection, some interesting figures are given by the bulletin already mentioned in regard to the amount of land occupied by fences of different kinds. It takes, for instance, only 209 rods of untrimmed hedge and only 214. rods of zigzag rail or worm fence to waste an acre of what might be productive land. For the-same expenditure -of land one can run 459 rods of woven wire and 473 rods of barbed wire. Other considerations, of course, may make it desirable to use the hedge or the worm fence, but tha waste involved is a factor that should not be overlooked. Similarly, farm lanes often may be eliminated by a simple rearrangement of fields; headlands, or turning spaces at the edges of fields, avoided ; and the farmstead itself — the group of farm buildings with their lota and yards, the garden, and the made - compact. In the case of the farmstead, however, considerations of health and attractiveness may well justify a slight sacrifice of economy. While a little planning often will result in the saving of much land now devoted to these unproductive uses, a more difficult problem is presented by waste land—land that is rendered untillable by swamps, ravines, rocks, slopes, etc., woodland that produces nothing salable, and pastures that are too poor to be profitable. Some areas are, of course, hopeless, and in that case they should be left out of the reckoning altogether. Before this is done, however, it will pay to look into the possibilities, of profitable reclamation. Man; untillable fields, for example, may be turned into productive pastures, or, if they will not grow enough grass to make this eco nomical, they can be used for the production of timber. On the other hand, it frequently happens that woodtotswhich yield nothing but a little firewood for home consumption are permitted to occupy valuable land. In deciding whether such lots should be cleared and tilled, the cost of clearing, ♦he increased value of the—cleared land, the Interest on the investments,the salable value of the timber products, and the added expense for fire wood which will follow the disappearance of the timber must all be taken into account. With unwooded areas) the advisability of bringing theffiAunder the plow may be determined, by comparing the probable cost with the, market price of good arable land in the neighborhood. Obviously, the higher the price ot land rises the more incentive there is for the farmer to avoid waste in the utilization of it. It is significant, however, that the investigations of the department have shown that, irrespective of the price, tenants put a greater part of the land to productive use than owners. The tenants pays rent for each acre and he can not afford tc have any of them idle. On the other hand, the man who has no rent to pay may be able, to get along on the produce of a part only of his farm, and he is, therefore more likely to overlook the potential value of the part he wastes. By so doing he is, of course, throwing away opportuni ties to make money, but this is not always appreciated by those who have not grasped the important fact that the average farm is too small for maximum efficiency and that in the majority of cases to increase the size of the farm business is to increase the profits from -it Those owners.however, who, realizing this, are operating leased land in addition to their own, are, like tenants, careful to see that they pay for no loafer acres. To anyone yho is buying or leasing land, then, the important question Is not “How much am I paying an acre for this tract?” but “How much am 1 paying for the acres that are going to work for mer'_..ln' it is calculated that a farm of 100 acres, selling at >IOO an acre, will cost the purchaser actually 1111.11 an acre if 90 per cent of it is productive, and S2OO an acre if only 50 per cent of it is productive. As a matter of fact the percentage of improved land in* farm* east of the Mississippi is only 59.5 and west of that river only 50.8. Improved land, however, it should be noted, is not always the same as productive land. A good timber lot, for examplefcjjnqt improved, hut it may be highly productive, .and farm buildings and fences stand on land that is improved but produces nothing. In the final analysis it is the amount of productive land that determines the earning capacity of And that should therefore determine its price.