Word: profitability
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...computer print-outs analyzing his plantings acre by acre: inputs of seed, fertilizer, irrigation water, machine time; output in bushels and dollars. He draws up precise operating schedules for his half-million dollars' worth of machinery; after all, every gallon of fuel saved adds a few more cents to profit. His print-outs also help him ponder marketing strategy (when should he time the sale of his crops to get the best price?) and financial problems (how can he distribute the stock in his family corporation so that his wife and seven children pay the lowest estate taxes...
...were falling drastically, partially reversed the Butz policy. Besides urging farmers to participate in set-aside programs, it has, with considerable prodding from Congress, established target prices for wheat and corn that are above today's market quotes, even though these target prices by no means guarantee farmers a profit. Government outlays to support farm incomes have quadrupled in two years, to an estimated $7.9 billion in fiscal 1978. But the Administration has resisted pressure to set support prices still higher?even though Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland last winter had to climb out a basement window to escape...
...future of American agriculture is really up to the farmers. Paradoxically, in an enterprise perhaps more heavily influenced by the Government than any other, big and efficient farmers like Pat Benedict are giving the nation a lesson in Adam Smith economics. By carefully calculating their potential profit in a free market, planning their operations around those computations and reinvesting the profits in more output, they are acting the way Smith said capitalists should. The results have been about what Smith predicted: growing production, rising innovation, expanding exports?and reasonable costs to customers...
...farms: "Any farm closing is traumatic. You worry that the fellow who sells out knows something you don't because he's shutting down and you're taking on debts to expand." But in his view expansion is the only way to make money: "Each acre produces so little profit that all you can do is go for bigger acres and make sure that each acre produces more crop." So, besides buying land, he has purchased so much machinery that it requires a football-field-sized yard just to park it. A partial inventory: four 15-ton trucks, three pickup...
Benedict estimates that it costs $300 an acre to raise sugar beets. At an average yield of 15 tons an acre, and a depressed price this year of around $21 a ton, the typical beet grower will receive $315 an acre, producing a thin profit in view of the heavy investment required. But Benedict's mechanization and tight management enable him to grow 20 tons an acre, worth $420, enough to promise a worthwhile return...