The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, February 15, 1917, Page 10

e S e e e e N i This ie- & new department eof the Leader devoted to news, facts, in- formation and opinions of interestto | farmers and farming as & business. Accounting Necessary on the Farm The Business Should Pay Interest, Wages and Profit, Like Any Business By Homer Dixon OLKS have at last begun to real- F ize that farming is a business. People have regarded the farm- ing business for too long a time as merely a “farm.” They always spoke of the banking business, the hardware business, the mercantile business, etc.,, but when it came to the farming busi- ness, it was just “the farm.” Because of the fact that the farmer is compelled to use his hands in order to perform his duties, his business has been thought of as “hand work.” We are findirz " at more -and more that the business of farming is “brain work” of the biggest kind. The fact that the business of farm- ing has not been considered as such in the past is not surprising, because it is within comparatively few years that the principles of business have been applied to farming generally. This has been brought out by a very gradual change in the system of farming. In the olden days when the colonists first landed, and still later than that, the problem of the farmer was to provide in' some way enough food and clothing for the family and a shelter for them in winter. If the farm did not provide for this the farmer usually did a little hunting and fishing. Later on the frontier pushed farther west, cities sprang up, manufacturies and trades developed, calling for a pro- cess of purchase and sale as a natural result, until what we now sell as grains and live stock, we now buy back as flour and meat for food or in different forms of clothing. This change has brought about a need for more careful management on the part of the farmer, and especially so now that the farming business has reached such great pro- portions. Iach individual farmer rep- resents more capital than formerly, and so the best management methods are necessary. CAPITAL IS MORE THAN MERCHANT’S In southern Minnesota it has been estimated that the average farmer represents a capital of from $15,000 to $25,000. This you can readily see is equal and in many cases greater than that of the average merchant in the small towns throughout the Northwest, with the possible exception of the banker. Now it would be hard to find one of these merchants who was not keeping a record of his business, yet we do find many farmers whose capital invested is in many cases as great and greater than what we have mentioned, who are keeping no record of their business. One difference, of course, is that the merchant is turning over his capital a little faster than is the farm- er, but this should make no direct dif- ference when it comes to keeping the record. The business of farming is “brain work.” If bookkeeping is brain work, then farming is brain work, because of the fact that if a farmer is to keep a set of farm accounts and keep them . accurately and well he will have to apply the principles of bookkeeping to his task. If he is going to till his soil to the greatest advantage he will have to apply the knowledge of the scientist, although he may never have studied any of the sciences; if he is going to care for and feed his live stock, he will have to apply the prin- ciples of nutrition and of medicine to his task; and if he is going to market his produce to the greatest advantage, he will have to think and plan and scheme with the brainiest men in the country. FARM SHOULD PAY INTEREST AND PROFIT So we find that farming is a business. It offers a challenge to the thinking man, and that is one reason why so many of the young men of today are taking up the business of farming. We are not going to find such a strong current of young men flowing towards the cities, because of the fact that the young men are taking up the challenge offered by the farming business. They realize that the farming business offers them opportunities as great as can be found in other lines of work, and so are more contented to remain on the farm, and to return to the farm after leaving college, because they know that farm- ing is a business. “Farmers have sometimes been un- justly criticised for knowing little about the business side of their work. The fact is that they usually have the details sufficiently in mind, but they are not always able to summarize and bring them together into a concrete statement,” says IFarmers’ Bulletin 661. Several thousand farms have been studied by the Office of 'arm Manage- ment, U. S. Department of Agriculture, with the object of analyzing their operations from a business standpoint, method for analyzing the farm busi- ness, explaining the crop record, live stock record; receipts, expenses, de- preciation, feed and supplies, capital and inventory. At the rear of the bulletin is a complete set of blanks, made out in such a form that anyone could take a complete record of the farm business for a year with very little difficulty. Why not send to the Editor in Chief, U. S. department of agriculture, ‘Washington, D. C., and get a copy ot Farmers' Bulletin 661? There are going to be a good many stormy days before spring. The evenings are rather long this time of the year, in fact they are longer now than they will be again before another year rolls around, so why not spend a little of this time look= ing over the past year's work in a sys- tematic way? The bulletin is free and you would surely feel repaid for your effort. The picture shows a crop of hemp being cut on the International Harvester company’s demonstration farm at Grand Forks, N. D. “This crop,” says J. G. Haney of the I. H. C. extension department “is not entirely new, even to this section of the country, as it has been tried a number of times, and so far as production is concerned, it has proven satisfactory in every respect. ' The only drawback to this crop has been the lack of machinery for handling it. Hemp is produced en- tirely for the fibre which it furnishes, and this fibre is used largely for the manufacture of carpet, cords and twine, and This is the Queen of Cows Marvelous Record Made by Segis‘ Feyne Johanna is used in the manufacture of linen.” in order to learn some of the most im- portant reasons for their success or failure. The bulletin goes on to state as follows: “Experience shows it is not possible to distinguish profitable farms by casual observance. When a farmer is operating a big business, even a low rate of interest without any wages for himself would bring in sufficient funds to give a prosperous appearance to the farm. But a farm can not properly be called successful unless it pays a fair rate of interest on the investment, re- turns fair wages for the farmer’s labor and maintains at the same time the fertility of the soil. “Farmers already know that the gain from a big business should be more than from a small one, that good cows are more profitable than poor ones, and that good crops are more de- sirable than those which do not pay - for harvesting. The real difficulty is ~ that the farmer has had no convenient way of measuring just how good or how poor his business really was—he has had no way of measuring its effi- ciency. ’ “In making a record of the farm business, the need of some accounts will be evident if the labor income is to be determined accurately. Studies covering a large number of farms show that the farmers keep many of the more important records. Some men will need accounts on the amount ex- pended for labor, others on the amount paid for feed and others on the amount of crops marketed or eggs sold. A memorandum of such items will prove especially valuable when summarizing the year’s business. The problem of farm accounting is not a question of a particular kind of form or blank, but of knowing what accounts to keep and what use to make of them.” The bulletin then goes on giving a have sprung into being during the past year, with Segis Feyne Johanna, a Holstein-Fresian cow owned by Oliver Cabana, Jr., champion over all breeds, on the strength of having produced in an official test 40.54 pounds of fat, the equivalent of over 50 pounds of butter, in one week. The test was conducted under the supervision of the THREE new world's record cows . New York State Agricultural college of Ithaca, and the cow’s performance has been officially recorded at the of- fice of the Holstein-Fresian associa- tion of America. This is the first time that a cow of any breed has been able to reach the §0-pound mark, and this cow’s record for seven consecutive days is equal to 50.68 pounds of butter, and she pro- duced in that same seven days 730.8 pounds of milk, with.an average butter fat percentage of 5.547. M. J., Smiley of South Dakota owned the cow “which gives way to the new champion by falling 3.91 pounds below the new mark, ‘When you consider that there are only 15 cows in the world that, under official test, have managed to cross the 40-pound mark, you will realize what Johanna has accomplished. When Mr. Smiley’s cow produced 46.772 pounds of butter, many leading breeders thought that the limit had been reach- ed, and so we wonder what will come next. She began her seven-day test on December 28 at Pine Grove Farms, New York, and because of the showing she made they decided to continue the official test for a 30-day record. On the thirteenth day, however, a sudden change in temperature ‘occurred. The YEN mercury dropped to zero and a blizzard set in. Despite this change she held up quite well as the following figures show: fat, 14 days, 76,332 pounds; milk, 14 days, 1,458.1 pounds; per cent fat, 14 days, 5.235. Sophie’s Adora and Goldie's Nehalem -Beauty take big honors in the Jersey breed as junior champion four-year- old and junior champion three-year=- old respectively. Would be . pretty nice if we could all have a 1000-pound butter cow like Sophie’s Adora, who at four years of age had produced 15,- 852.2 pounds of milk containing 888 pounds of butter fat, which amounts to 1,044.7 pounds of butter, thus gaining the honors as world’s champion four- year-old Jersey, and champion of all the Channel Island breeds of that age. Sophie's Adora is owned and was bred by Hood Farm, Mass. She is the daughter of Pogis 99th of Hood Farm, a sensational sire, and her dam is Lass 69th of Hood Farm. She is three- quarter sister to Sophie’s Bertha, who was sold recently at an auction for $5,000. Goldie’s Nehalem Beauty Junior, three-year-old champion, is owned by C. F. Reid of Oregon. In a 365-day test conducted. by the Oregon Agricul- tural college, according to the rules of the register of merit, she produced 12,867.7 pounds of milk containing 750.61 pounds of butterfat. This beats the old record held by Lass 7T4th of Hood Farm by four pounds. Beauty completer her record on Sep- tember 9, 1916, and dropped a strong calf on November 14, 1916.