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Abstract
The standard analytical approaches and methods of farm management economics are simple, sensible
and powerful. Still, examples of inappropriate nonsensical, approaches to farm management economics
questions proliferate. In this paper, the focus is on some inappropriate, nonsensical, approaches to socalled
management analysis of dairy farming operations. Included in the analytical eccentricities which
abound are such things as trying to evaluate farm performance and changes but not distinguishing
between cash (financial feasibility) and profit (economic efficiency), nor considering the time value of
earning of capital invested; trying to estimate the cost of pasture; trying to show to lift productivity on
one family farm by having a good hard look at the average performance of other farms; and the folly of
inventing measures of performance such as Economic Farm Surplus, that are designed and adjusted to
facilitate comparisons between farms, and then trying to use such measures for something mostly
different, farm management analysis. It is as easy to get it right as it is to get it wrong; so more sense
and less non-sense is the call.