Journal of Agricultural Ecmomics. 377

D~SCUSSION ON MR, BARKER’S PAPER.

I. G. Reid: I should like, first of all, to thank Mr. Barker very much for his interesting paper,

particularly so as he happens to be carrying out his work on the Example Farm described in this paper, in my province. This arouses interest in our work; it provides me with more work and a certain amount of stimulation through emulation. But I mould like to challenge Mr. Barker on one fundamental point: that he does not consider it so vitally important that the farm should be representative as well as a n example. If I can go forward in time, to tomorrow night, to the findings in Mr. Reeves’s paper, the author there stresses that in trying to persuade farmers to adopt these economic and technical innovations, we must remember that their range of reference is small. It is upon this point that I challenge Mr. Barker. Merely to say that as a farm is under 100 acres, as are the majority of farms in Great Britain, and lies on relatively infertile soil, as do the majority of farms in Great Britain, i t is therefore a good Example Farm, is not a very sound argument.

I am also interested because about twelve months ago I was asked if I would find a ‘‘ pilot farm ” in the low Weald of Sussex. I went t o the task with other colleagues, notably Mr. Donald Sykes. having in mind that representativeness was extremely important a?$ that I would not be prepared to suggest a farm for development into a I‘ pilot farm until I was confident that it was representative, even i f only within a fairly limited locality. My task happened to be in a clearly defined locality in the form of a district of the County -4gricultural Executive Committee. We took ten parishes which formed the major part of that district and proceeded t o try and find our example and representative farm.

The method we used required access to the quarterly returns of all the farms in those ten parishes and also to the Milk Marketing Board data concerning milk sales. We are most grateful for the permission to use this information. for without it this particular piece of work could not have been started.

The first step was to find out as much as possible about the universe from which we were going to derive our representative Example farm. From the data we were. able to record the cropping and stocking, the standard income, the System Index (which I d o not propose here to define), and the milk yield per cow, and so on. This information was then p u t on to individual punch cards, whereby we were able to sort out the farm according to various factors which we considered important, and which we thought the representative farm should contain. We played about for some time, trying to decide the order of priority of these various factors, and eventually decided on the order (a) herd size, (b) acreage size, (c) number of workers, (d) milk yield per cow, (e) system index. We eventually arrived at a list of about ten farms, which we confidently thought were representative. We kept to a list of about ten. realising that the attributes of the farmer were indeed important if the farm were to become a pilot farm. But the co-operating farmer should have a representative farm.

Having obtained this list by processing statutory data, we then visited each farmer on that list to obtain information about their husbandry practices, b e d equipment and so on. I should like to record my gratitude to those farmers, and the many others with whom we work, for their generosity and tolerance in answering our questions.

Having completed this field work, we are confident that the farmers were representa- tive and did contain the problems which are confronting that area. We are confident that we have among those farmers some who would be willing to co-operate with US and the X.A.A.S. in some farm management project.

Whilst carrying out this work, we came upon a circumstance which might be developed with profit for the purposes of farm management research and advisory work. I would call it the idea of the I‘ twin-farms.” We found among our farms quite a number of pairs; the same acreage, numbers of cows, intensity of organisation and so on, but differing in some one major factor. There were pairs within the selected ten who were contacted in the field; one of a pair was sometimes plainly more profitable than the other. We do feel that in this way we may be able to pinpoint more easily those factors which are cqusing the difference in final profit. It may be that the character of the farmer is the major factor of difference, If so, then we have narrowed our field of enquiry, and know better which discipline or specialist to use, the husbandry man, the economist or the soclologls t .

If the Esample farm is to be of the greatest use in advisory work, it must be repre- sentative. Representative, perhaps, of only a limited area. &fr. Reeves would say of a parish rather than of a county; we have made a British compromise and said ten parishes.

370 Joursal of Agricultural Economics.

A . H . Maunder: I was very interested to hear about Mr. Reid’s process of selection of a typical farm

because i t follows very much our own methods which we have used and which are described in the proceedings of the Society. As the process was described to us I had a horrible feeling Mr. Reid was going to come out with the answer which I have heard from a number of places-there is no such thing as a typical farm-but I was relieved to hear that he did in fact find several. We ourselves were working with a small area and came to similar conclusions.

Perhaps I might take this opportunity of not only thanking Mr. Barker for his paper but also of saying that a number of the I.C.I. publications have had some very pleasant features which I have enjoyed. You showed, I think, that in the kind of investigation in which you are interested, the Example farm was of use but I wonder whether it i s possible to go a little further and to get from its use some information relating to some more general features in methodology. You stated that “translation from an experimental procedure to a practical basis of application involves reducEd technical efficiency and a lower level of achievement ” ; that is the first thing, then nor does i t take fully into account the possible repercussions among interdependent enterprises.” I will say that as f a r as that first effect goes, that is the reduced efficiency, it would be very useful if we had some quantitative measures of what these reductions are likely to be, or at any rate some range of reduction which might be expected and which could in fact be applied t o budgeting studies in those cases where we bave to use experimental results. Contrary to opinion, some of us a t Oxford do get on to farms and some of us are engaged in a small study of budgeting. We have to use experimental information for want of anything else and we would like to know the reduction or the range in reduction in efficiency which one might expect when translating something from the experimental plot to an actual farm.

The second effect you mentioned was the repercussions of the introduction of some new technique, say, on interdependent enterprises. I should have thought that that could be estimated in advance by some sort of budgeting. I did not gather from the paper that budgets were in fact made, but if they had been made i t would hve been possible to make a comparison between the estimated results of the budgets and the actual results which were obtained on the farm. Comparison between budget estimates and actual results would be most useful because, as far as I know, the information on this particular point is extremely scanty.

-. Morris: We are not faced with this same problem, representativeness, in that we have in

the State of Indiana very many pure types of farming. I notice that in this case the farmer mentioned by Mr. Barker has to be prepared to accept this practice within his framework of what is generally good farm management. We feel definitely that before we proceed in t h i s way we should first have an Example farm where a new system of management could be introduced on the basis of our guaranteeing the farmer some form of average return. Should he make more than that some form of adjustment would have to be agreed upon but this procedure would enable us to experiment under actual farming conditions with new systems of management which we would hesitate to recommend for general adoption before such further investigation.

Dr. G. P. Wibbcrley: It appears that Mr. Barker is in for some crossfire from Wye College tonight. We

are interested in his concept of an Example farm both in general and because the I.C.I. have a number of cosperating farms in the South-east province. Recently I discussed the merits of different farm accounting schemes with one of their cosperating farmers. The cost accounts kept previously a t Wye involved about A250 of the department’s time and resources for each farm recorded. The detailed records kept on each farm by the I.C.I. involve, I would estimate, about A400 in cost.

The point at issue here is not an argument as to whether this investment is sound. It is well nigh impossible to make such a judgment in work of such a research nature. It is, however, pertinent to ask whether or not the I.C.I. treats the i400 of record keeping, analysis and technical visits and advice given to the chosen farm as a cost against that farm, and against, we hope, its rapidly rising level of profits. Some of it should be so treated as a deliberate attempt is being made to speed up the tempo of economic and technical change on that particular farm. The farm and farmer are being treated to fairly heavy management advice and the farmer does not initiate all of it or completely control its pace.

What sort of location should an Example farm have ? The recent Bulletin by the I.C.I. on a small dairy farm in the Weald of Sussex is interesting in this connection. The

Journal of Agricultural Economics. 379 farm is situated near Heathfield, at an angle of two main roads with two good rural bus services. This makes the farm and farmer very fortunate and very atypical as this area of Sussex is quite poor in its bus services and a large number of farms have bad access. In an area where schools are poor and infrequent the I.C.I. farm is also very fortunate in having a new school on the edge of the farm and being close to others in Heathfield. Social provision is also rather weak in the area but near one comer of the chosen farm is an inn which is thriving and of more than usual dimensions.

Some of these points may sound a little lighthearted but surely they emphasise that farms chosen as ’‘ examples ” should be reasonably representative, in the way dealt with by Mr. Reid, and also typical in their location and social problems. Up to this point in the paper and discussion I fail to see how the two concepts of ” example ” and “ representative ” can be completely divorced from each other without real disadvantage arising. Perhaps Mr. Barker will dispel these doubts of mine in his closing reply.

C. H. Blagburn:’ After hearing Mr. Barker’s paper and also one or two of the remarks that have been

made since, particularly from Wye, I find myself somewhat in a state of confusion. The confusion I think arises mainly from the distinction, if there is one, between the pilot farm and the Example farm, of both of which we have been hearing. I take i t there is a distinction; I am not certain that I have quite understood what it is. A pilot farm, as I understand it, is one which is taken under the wing of the N.A.A.S. or some other organisation, and where the farmer puts himself entirely, or almost entirely, in their hands and adopts a considerable number of improved farm practices. It is hoped that the figures for that farm, in the course of a year or two, will show a great economic improvement and that the farm will thereby serve as a demonstration to surrounding farmers of the results of adopting good farm management principles generally. An Example farm, if I have understood the paper rightly, is one where you do not so much set out to demonstrate the advantages of good farm management in general, but the economic effects of applying a specific change in technique. At any rate that is what I understood from the earlier part of Mr. Barker’s paper, and the fact that he used as an illustration the implications of introducing such a new technique as intensive grazing of milk cows. Surely, if that is what you are setting out to do with an Example farm-simply to try and measure the economic effects of introducing a particular techniqueyou want to be sure that that is the only change the farmer makes-and, of course, the direct consequential changes. Obviously if you adopt intensive grazing you will also have to make some changes in the livestock policy. Surely you want to be certain that what you are looking a t are the effects of that particular change and that particular change only; you want to be sure that the farmer does not at the same time make a lot of other changes which will result in your not being able t o decide which are the effects of the technique you are examining and which are the effects of the other changes the farmer has made. I thought that was what Mr. Barker meant by an Example farm. But later in the paper it became less obvious that this was so; because it appears that the Example farmer, although he receives such information and assistance as are given to him, receives i t merely as advice which he is in no sense compelled to accept, so that the responsibility for determining the action taken remains with him. Does not that mess up the whole thing ? Unless the farmer does apply th is technique and confines himself to applying this technique as the only change he makes, then surely he has become a pilot farmer; in other words, he may be useful as a means of demonstrating the effects of good farm management generally, but not for demonstrating the effects of a particular change in technique. It Seems to me that the remarks made from Wye confuse the issue still further, if I may say so, for I cannot quite see why it is necessary for your farm to be SO absolutely typical if all you are trying to do is to find out the effects of a particular change in technique. I can see that if you want to have a pilot farm, then before it could be of much use as a demonstration for farmers in that area i t must be reasonably typical of that area. But I cannot see why this need for i t being a typical farm arises, if it is an Example farm that you are looking for. I would be very glad if Mr. Barker could shed some light on this, particularly on the distinction between an Example farm and a pilot farm.

,

H. Whitby: Mr. Blagburn’s conclusion has led me to admit that I am very confused. I cannot

for the life of me see the difference between the Example farm and making good manage- ment use of cost accounts, and I would be very glad if Mr. Barker could deal with that point. It seems to me to be a very moot one in view of the fact that he disclaims that his farm need be typical or representative. Incidentally, arising from what Dr. Wibberley has said about taking into account the rather large cost which is incurred in doing this work, I notice that the farmer himself, apparently, can do very much as he likes. He is not under any compulsion at all from the advisers. It seems to me rather odd that you

380 Journal of Agricultural Eco?Hnnics.

are spending this rather large sum of money and not a t the same time asking the farmer to give you a reasonable quid pro quo. In view of the fact that all this money is being spent, surely it is only reasonable that'the farmer should co-operate and not be left entirely to his own devices.

w. corulcy: As a farmer I have been rather impressed by Dr. Wibberley's View on th is matter.

I suppose I feel rather jealous of the farmers who have been lucky enough to get their costing done by I.C.I., but I do feel that if the I.C.I. put L400 worth of cost accounting into my farm I should probably make quite a bit more without perhaps necessarily taking any further management advice. Although I am an economist as well as a farmer I simply have not got the physical time to do full cost accounting although I realise how beneficial i t would be.

V. A . A&: I would just like to ask Mr. Barker to cliuify three rather than two concepts. I refer

to the statistically representative farm about which we have heard so much from Wye, and what I might call Mr. Blagbum's pilot farm, which I would call the model or ideal farm, and finally the live model for experiments. Surely if you experiment on a farm and give technical advice, our experience in Malaya is that you are not always correct. Sometimes you make mistakes and then you do not have profits and you would not be able to increase income. What do you do then ? If i t is a laboratory naturally you can expect failures as much as you can expect successes. Finally I would like to ask three questions. What is the effect on the Example farm, of being visited so frequently by farmers in the area; what i s the psychological effect on farmers themselves; and does the farmer still remain the same type of person ?

Ancrum Evans: It seems to me that if you have a special exercise, and you want information, then

you are justified in spending just as much money as you want to spend in order to get the information. L400 or 5500 spent on a project is well worth it if you get information for it. I would like to know what is meant by a partial cost system. and do I understand correctly from the paper that full detailed cost accounting has been established as being of no use at all ?

K. E. Hunt: I am puzzled to know whether it is the Example farm in farm management investi-

gation or in farm management extension about which we are talking. I cannot quite fathom whether this is for finding something out or is in fact a teaching device, or whether the two are muddled up. I wonder whether a little more vivid consciousness of the fact that there are probably conceptual weaknesses in any one of these approaches to finding out how fann businesses or any other businesses work would not be helpful. Whether you use time series analysis or inter-farm correlations or case studies. they all have some partly conceptual. partly practical, disadvantages. Couldn't we look at each from the point of view of its contribution and try quite consciously to consolidate all these a preaches, i f you like seek lthe concensus of interpretation gained from all of them. Tiis is better than taking up positions as opponents or s u p p r t m of one approach or another.

The other two questions I would like to ask are, first, in respect of this question of typical farms or representative farms. In some other fields of enquiry it is found that i f you try and match a sample or select an individual so that one, two, three, or up to a dozen, shall we say, of its characteristics are similar to the characteristics of the universe with which you are dealing, you may find that if you look at, say, the 21st characteristic the chances are that your selection which you thought was typical proves to be widely different from the universe in respect of the 21st characteristic. If wonder if anyone can tell me whether you get that sort of experience in the Wye study or in others ? The second question is to ask whether there is any information available on the kind of broader approach, which both Mr. Barker and Mr. Maunder referred to, the question of the Uerence between returns on the experimental farm and returns in practice ? There have been, I believe, some very large scale sample enquiries done in one or two countries, India for instance, to get at the return in the field for c e M n fairly specific operations. I believe fertiliser application and differences in seed varieties have been used. This is not, of course, an answer to the way the thing tots up for the whole farm, but i t would be an answer to a question Mr. Maunder asked-how do experiemntal results compare with results in the field. My question most specifically is: Is anything being done in this country a t Rothamstead, or the Ministry, or elsewhere, of that nature ?

Journal of Agricultural Ecommics.

R. Dauidson: I would like to ask Mr. Barker if this whole business of typicality of farms does not

depend on what you are using the farm for. If you are using it for the purposes of finding out what effect a particular new technique has, then the degree of typicality depends entirely on what that technique is. For instance, if i t is for the use of a new type of grass, it may only be typical for certain physical features such as soil and climate. In that case even size would not matter very much, whereas if you were using i t as a demonstration device to show what difference a technique will make to the whole income of a farm, then typicality covers a whole range of points such as size, physical features and even perhaps social environment and the type of farmer.

A . S. Barker: The comments have raised some points which invite more detailed consideration

than is possible in an immediate reply. Several have been directed to the importance of the representative character of the Example farm in relation to the farming of the surrounding area. I did not intend to imply that this aspect should be disregarded but that the main purpose of the Example farm did not require i t to be representative in a statistical sense. The degree to which a farm is typical wiIl depend greatly on the characters or criteria used and the relative importance attached to them. Accordingly, the degree of representativeness of a particular farm in a selected area may be temporary and fortuitous, except in respect of certain relatively immutable features such as size and soil type. Other factors such as yields, type and numbers of livestock may fluctuate due to causes which are partly accidental so that to somq,extent i t seems a matter of chance if a farm in a particular year is :F "average or model farm. If many characteristics are involved in defining the statistically average " farm, the greater the likelihood that a farm so defined in one year would not qualify in another. While an Example farm should not possess important unique features of a more or less permanent nature, i t does not appear to be necessary that i t should $osely correspond with the means of all the criteria used to define the I ' average farm in order to establish and measure the effects of management practice and the advantages accruing from changes in techniques. Where the latter are applied on other individual farms, their potential advantages have t o be assessed in terms of the particular circumstance2,of each farm and it is doubtful if the information derived from a '' statistically typical farm for this purpose is likely to have an appreciable advantage over similar material from a farm which is broadly of a common type as judged on inspection by an agriculturist conversant with the area. A different situation arises, of course, where i t is desired to assess the extent to which the methods and results of an Example farm may apply t o farms generally within an area. For this object the comparability of the whole farm business is fundamental and the degree of correspondence between the selected characteristics of the Example farm and those of other farms-which would be established by special surveys-is obviously important.

A second point raised in the discussion is the essential purpose of the Example farm and how i t differs in this respect from the pilot farm. The overriding aim with the Example farm is to improve management and operation as these are reflected in the farm profit and to explain and demonstrate how this has been done, i.e. to establish and illustrate the effects of overall good management. Associated with this will be major technical changes which directly affect the economics of particular enterprises and which may often have a wider influence on the whole farm organisation. The Example farm, if successful, thus shows improvement in overall profitability and the contribution thereto of changes in techniques. The reliability with which such contributions can be measured and allocated depends on the comprehensiveness, detail and accuracy of the physical and financial data which necessitates a recording system for full costs. Merely to establish by how much total profit has increased is not of much value for advisory and demonstration purposes unless it can also be shown how i t has occurred. The descriptive label attached to a farm used in th is way is, of course, not necessarily distinctive: i f the basic objective and method of investigation are similar there will be no important difference between what some describe as a pilot farm and others as an Example farm. I used the latter term because the former has an official connotation: I hope this explanation will resolve the ambiguity.

In the scheme I have dycribed, the co-operating farmer does not put the policy and management of his farm in other hands "-they remain his responsibility and are influenced only by way of advisory consultation. Doubtless he has access to more technical and economic information than the average farmer but it will be applied to his own practice only if and when he is convinced of the advantages to be expected or at least that a proposed change merits a trial. As a general principle, changes are introduced by agreement on the grounds of improved economic results but lack of agreement does not preclude the farmer from acting on his personal opinion. Generally the correctness

382 Journal of Agricdtwral E c o m i c s . or otherwise of the decision is apparent subsequently but we do not pretend to be either the sole or best source of all information the farmer should use or an infallible judge of how he should exploit it. Where opinions on management policy or methods have not been in accord, experience has shown that the farmer is by no means invariably proved wrong, and if we are primarily concerned with investigating the running of the commercial farm it is essential i t should be operated by the fanner as his business. In any event i t is improbable that the type of farmer required would collaborate on any other basis. The information sought is on the effects of changes when the farmer is running the business and if in the circumstances of an Example farm he cannot be persuaded to adopt alterna- tives to his present methods--and the resulting benefit proved-then the prospect of convincing the general body of farmers to make analogous changes merely through advisory recommendation seems to be very limited.

Since the Example farm is not expected to introduce operational changes unless, SO far as can be judged, they are likely to result in enhanced profit, there is no case for some arrangement equivalent to a guarantee of average profit. The case would be fundamentally different if the purpose of the Example farm was t o experiment with relatively untried techniques the outcome of which was problematical and the advantages very uncertain.

It has been suggested that some part of the cost incurred in the investigation of management on an Example farm should be debited to the farm, because of the special facilities and technical assistance accorded to management. But the benefits are not restricted to that farm since i t is intended the information will subsequently be available for use on other farms, and since this can scarce1 be regarded as a normal farm expense the entire. cost involved should not be charged to &e Example farm. In any case, however, in arriving at profit no deduction is made for the managerial function; this is in line with usual practice but it does not, of course, preclude allocating part of the profit to expenses of management where desired. I might perhaps mention that the converse has been argued-though not tonight-that the special and additional information provided by the fanner co-operating in these investigations might be regarded as a source of revenue- a service the farm is sel l ingand also involving some arbitrary (and theoretical) financial adjustment. So far I am not persuaded that either of these contentions represents a serious omission from the financial picture of the farm.

In direct response to another question I may perhaps reiterate that the Example farm is used for technical experimentation only to a very minor extent and certainly not to a degree which would impair commercial operation or significantly affect financial results. By and large, the changes in techniques are based on technical research under- taken elsewhere and are not introduced unless there is a good prospect that they will lead to improved results. In this respect the Example farm may be. regarded as the fore- runner to the majority of farms; i t provides the opportunities to examine the effects of incorporating technical developments in commercial practice so that the information can be applied to other farms.

That naturally leads to the use of budgeting which has been mentioned in the discussion. Thia does not appear to call for comment by me on methods or the extent t o which budgeting is used on these Example farms-clearly its scope and detail varies from farm to farm. I am more interested in the degree of coincidence between budget estimates and subsequent realisations. No comprehensive examination of this matter has yet been made in this investigation but as everyone knows who has experience of using this method in circumstances where results can be accurately measured, there is frequently--if not commonly-an impressive discrepancy between estimates and final results. But i t is, of course, the direction of the financial forecast rather than its precise size which is of &st importance. Nevertheless, as has been suggested, i t is a problem which would be interesting and possibly very useful to explore. Related to i t is the question of reduced technical efficiency involved in translating results obtained by experimental methods to practical application. Here again while one can be satisfied that this generally occurs, there is little information as to its common scale and 90 far as I am aware no specific enquiry has been made into th is relationship, at least in this country. I believe, for example, a figure often accepted for this difference with cereal crops is 10 per cent. In the investigation with which I am concerned we attempt to measure the response of grass to fedher nitrogen in terms of utilised starch equivalent and the general level of increment has been fairly similar to the response commonly found in experimental results. How fortuitous this may be I do not know, but experimental data are largely derived from cutting techniques where presumably there is no waste while the estimates obtained from farm practice involve both cutting and the grating animal and an appreciable proportion of the herbage grown is not consumed.

I am conscious, Mr. Chairman, that my reply to the discussion has not dealt adequately with all the points raised and I am particularly indebted for some comments which will give me " food for thought " when I am able to ponder them more leisurely. I should like to conclude by acknowledging that the work of my colleagues has largely provided the material for my observations.