ABSTRACT
Representative farms have received little explicit attention in the literature, probably because of the continuing argument over appropriate criteria for farm classification. The selection of criteria for choosing the representative farm will depend on the planning problems being faced. Any wide variation in cropping patterns will have been removed when the type of farming area was identified. The central analysis of the planning phase will be how labor allocations are altered as a result of innovation possibilities. The components of a detailed labor profile are the activities identified in the system, the acreage, calendar, operational sequence, and rates of work for each operation. Improving the simulation of the profile requires attention to the timing of crop operations; and in the description of profile construction which follows, the mode is used only for the timing variable to give greater typicality.
