The ratio method, while astonishingly accurate as a method for ascertaining production costs, is not infallible. In the case of hogs and corn, for example, the ratio has remained constant, decade by decade, for sixty years. It is always conceivable, however, that a change in production methods will come which will enable farmers to produce hogs for less than the 11.5-bushel ratio. It is also conceivable that as population increases, there will be a smaller premium put on meat and a greater premium put on grain, with the result that the standard ratio will fall below eleven bushels. But in any event the change will be slow, and in all probability the ratio of the fifty years from 1925 to 1975 will not fall below 11 bushels. In the case of such products as butter, where improvements in method count for more than in the case of hogs, there is more likelihood of the standard ratio changing as time goes on. In the case of such standard crops as corn and wheat, there is small probability of great change in the standard ratios. Any undue and prolonged profit will be promptly absorbed by land values and labor wages. About the only technological improvement which would throw the standard ratios altogether out of line would be the discovery of how to make food out of air and water by manufacturing processes. The ratio method, when used in price fixing, rather than in price judging, is open to several objections. Under a _laissez faire_ system it may be necessary for months at a time to cater to the consumers by selling food at below the ratio or cost-of-production price. And again it is possible for months at a time to gouge the consumer by selling food above the ratio or cost-of-production price. It is only as farmers, consumers and business men become educated to the desirability of prices more nearly approximating cost of production that the ratio system can be used extensively in actual price fixing. When it is so used, there will be less likelihood of over-production on the one hand and under-production on the other hand.