Mismanagement Worse Than Bad Weather
Variations in profits from farms are more largely due to mismanagement than to unfavorable seasons or fluctuating prices. Farming has become decidedly a business proposition. The abnormal demand now being made upon the United States for food and other agricultural products to be consumed at home and in European countries makes the extensive application of scientific farming imperative.
Many farms, unprofitable because of mismanagement, could by reorganization be systematized and developed into profitable, lucrative undertakings. Accompanying this reorganization, the application of business principles and practical management to scientific methods is of paramount importance.
With this better farming there must be associated reliable accounting, demonstrating a business warranting banking credit. It is often claimed that farmers can not keep books, when as a matter of fact, while they do not do bookkeeping in the generally accepted term, nine out of ten, from notes jotted down, have as accurate knowledge of the financial side of their enterprise as the majority of business men. This has been repeatedly proven by the hundreds of farm surveys, representing many States, by the Office of Farm Management of the Department of Agriculture, through which it was found possible on almost every farm to obtain an accurate financial statement from the memoranda kept by the farm owners, their managers or tenants, and to ascertain the profits.
Thorough organization with method and accounting simplifies management, curtails expenses, makes possible larger returns with less outlay, and establishes credit, which will not longer be denied the farmer when he adopts business methods and can show the bank his statement of annual business conditions.