6 Mineral Nutrition of Plants 



tion during dry seasons. A large part will need lime, fertilizer, or both 

 from the start. 



Most of these acres are in the interior of continents, away from regu- 

 lar trade routes or far from good harbors. In order to use them, medical 

 facilities, local industry, and electric power must go along with agricul- 

 tural development. Families settled by themselves or in small groups 

 in the Middle West and in the Great Plains during the nineteenth 

 century. Transportation, industry, and the other services followed them. 

 Very few of these prospective new acres can be settled in this way. On 

 them settlement shall need to be planned with the idea of combined 

 resource development: water, soil, forest, minerals, and power must be 

 considered together. 



We do not really need all this new land — not yet. During the war 

 careful estimates made by the Department of Agriculture and the 

 land grant colleges showed that it would be entirely practicable to in- 

 crease agricultural production in this country by about twenty per cent 

 on most items and higher than that on several (8). Somewhat lower 

 increases might be expected in some other countries, but in most of 

 them considerably higher ones could be had through the application 

 of what is now known. Thus, even without any new soil the food needs 

 of the world could be met for cereals, roots and tubers, and sugar. But 

 some new areas or further increases in yields beyond those assumed 

 in this earlier study would be needed to supply a bit more fats and oils 

 and considerably more pulses and nuts, fruits and vegetables, meat, and 

 milk. 



Thus, taking the two together — the potential new soil and the dem- 

 onstrated potential production under good management on land al- 

 ready being farmed — the world could have food far beyond the amounts 

 estimated as required for the world population in i960. 



Now, such estimates may appear to be very optimistic. They prob- 

 ably are in terms of the real political and economic situation that we 

 see about us. They indicate what could be done with our present knowl- 

 edge // adequate institutional arrangements were made for effective soil 

 use on a sustained production basis. In another sense they are low. They 

 are low because these estimates take no account of entirely new tech- 

 nology. They assume merely a general acceptance of existing technology 



