United States Bureau of Plant Industry 



INCREASING YIELD WITH LESS EFFORT 



For the same amount of work in the fields, it is possible to raise cotton that will ripen 

 in time to escape damage by the boll weevil, which at one time destroyed 30 per cent 

 of the crop in a year; to raise a variety that resists the wilt, a disease which for- 

 merly destroyed entire crops; and to produce a fiber superior to the best available 

 forty years ago 



England could, if necessary, raise on their land sufficient food to maintain 

 themselves. They could do so, however, only by replacing a large part of their 

 idle lands or deer-parks with farms and by releasing industrial workers for 

 farm work. 



Man's competitors for the produce of the earth are too numerous and 

 too elusive to be fought by any person singlehanded. Our greatest successes 

 have come from joint efforts through a strategy based on knowing more 

 about the enemy than he can possibly understand about us. 



Limitations of Self-sufficiency Our use of science for increasing pro- 

 duction has gone hand in hand with more extensive commerce within every 

 country and more extensive international trade. Each region cao develop 

 intensively whatever special resource it has — iron in one place, sulfur in an- 

 other, timber somewhere else, or fish — and send it off to other parts of the 



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