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Most farm management studies of the factors affecting the financial success of farmers have dealt with farm organization and farm practices. Comparatively little attention has been given to the farmer himself who develops and directs the organization and determines the practices followed. It is hardly fair to assume, however, that farm management investigators have failed to recognize the importance of personal and family characteristics and considerations as factors affecting farm earnings. Farm management is a comparatively new branch of researeh. The first definite program of farm management investigation in the United States was initiated by the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station in 1902. Two years later the first farm management work of the United States Department of Agriculture was started. In many states farm management research has been in progress less than a decade. As in any new field of study, the investigators started first with the most obvious and easily measured phenomena and gradually developed technique for more intricate studies.Methods of studying farm organization and practices have been developed and refined. For some time, farm management investigators have realized the need for an evaluation and measurement of the personal and family influences that affect farm success, in order better to interpret and apply the results of these o rganization and practice studies. A study of factors affeeting the cost and returns from dairy cows in Pine County, Minnesota, indicated that variations in management had more influence than all other factors considered. ~ Research workers have generally recognized the importance of this personal and management factor but lack of technique for its study and measurement have prevented their giving ir the consideration they felt it deserved.

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The farm cost accountant is constantly confronted with the problem of prorating the several items of cost of farm operation to the-productiveenterprises in such a way that the resulting costs may serve as a basis for the selection and comparison of enterprises. The numerous items of joint cost as well as the complementary and supplementary relationships involved make the problem a complex and difficult one. For the sake of expediency purely arbitrary methods are often used even though the accountant fully realizes that at least theoretically, an error is involved in the method that may more or less obscure the relations that are being studied.Flat Rates for Horse Work-An example of an item of farm cost that must be prorated to the productive enterprises is the expense of maintaining the work horses. The expense for horse work is usually charged at a flat rate per hour. To determine this flat rate the total cost of maintaining the horses is divided by the total number of hours which they work. The rate is then multiplied by the number of hours of work chargeable to each enterprise in order to arrive at the total horse charge against that enterprise. Obviously such a method is open to criticism. Some crops require large amounts of horse work for a few days during the rush of the planting or harvest season. Extra horses may be kept throughout the year to handle these peak loads. Livestock, on the other hand may present a fairly uniform demand for horse work throughout the year or their heaviest demands may come during the winter when crops are not demanding attention.It may not be altogether fair to charge to all enterprises the cost of extra horses kept to handle the peak loads when certain enterprises contribute most largely to these peaks.As an example of the inequality that might result from the use of a "flat rate" let us consider a farm which could easily be operated by six horses during the entire year with the exception of a few weeks during wheat seeding and harvest. An extra team must be maintained throughout the year simply to have its services available for this peak demand of the wheat crop. Under the "flat rate" method of distributing horse costs all enterprises on the farm would bear part of the cost of this extra team, although they could have been maintained as well without it. As a matter of fact this extra team may have done work on other enterprises than the wheat crop during the year. Such use would merely be by way of substitution for the other six horses and (369) at Dalhousie University on June 21, 2015 http://ajae.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from

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