Part 1 - The modern farm business

In the first booklet of the second year we made a farm business survey.

We saw that a farm business is made up of various elements.

· First, there are the workers.

That is, the farmer who holds the land and the animals.
He is the head of the business.
Next, there are the members of his family who work on the farm.
There are also perhaps some labourers who work on the farm and get a wage.

· On many farms there are animals.

There are chickens, sheep, goats.
Often too there are oxen, cows, pigs.
In some places there are donkeys or horses; near the deserts there are camels.
Often farmers do not concern themselves with these animals.
But all the same all the animals are a part of the farm.
They may produce milk, they may yield meat, and some may provide work- animal power for tilling or transport.
Animals can produce, so they are part of the farm business.

· All the land that belongs to the farmer is likewise part of the farm business, that is: the ground where vegetables are grown- the garden; the tree plantations, for example, coffee plantations, oil palms, mango trees, papaws; the cultivated fields of cotton, rice, yams, millet, groundnuts, maize; fields that are left to rest or are not cultivated, the fallows; land where animals come to feed- the pastures.

All this land which produces plants is part of the farm business.

· The farmer's tools are part of the farm business: machete, hoe, plough, seed drill, cart, sprayer, thresher, pulping machine.

· The buildings are part of the farm business, for instance, those made to shelter animals or keep tools in.

· The installations and arrangements made by the farmer are part of the farm business: the compost pit, the place for manure, the well, the irrigated rice fields.

The farm business is a whole made up of workers, animals, land, tools, buildings and installations.