ABSTRACT
A farm includes buildings, fences, roads, tile drains, and water supply. It may include irrigation systems, levelling, stones picked, weeds eliminated, injurious animals such as prairie-dogs eliminated. A farm is not land. It is a living thing—a biological manufacturing plant including many kinds of equipment, and numerous expenditures for maintaining the continuity of production. Farm land has a value to prospective operators. In some regions it has a value to landlords, and at some periods it has a value because of expected appreciation. When a farmer prospers, he shares his prosperity with the hired man, country doctor, school teacher, banker, and merchant, and he raises his own standard of living. Nominal prices of farm land in 1933 were higher than actual prices, because few sales could be made at the nominal prices. If all the gold-using world returns to a gold basis prices of farm land expressed in pre-war gold currency will probably remain below pre-war.
