REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. 27 



^vi]l keep people in the rural districts if they are to be deprived of 

 thje benefits of modern social, educational, and other opportunities. 

 But when farming is made profitable and when the better things 

 of life are steadily brought, in increasing measure, to the rural com- 

 munity, so that farm families need not give up farming in order to 

 satisfy their desires for the best that modern civilization affords, the 

 great motives which lead youth and middle age to leave the countrj' 

 districts Avill be removed. In order to assure a continuance of the 

 best strains of farm people in agriculture, there can be no relaxation 

 of the present movements for a better country life, economic, social, 

 and educational. 



THE HAZARDS OF AGRICULTURAL. PRODUCTION. 



Given a sound basis of distribution, the curtailment of the so-called 

 hazards of production — plant and animal diseases, insect pests, pred- 

 atory animals, and rodents — with resulting increased yields per 

 acre and reduced costs of production, will go far toward insuring a 

 just measure of prosperity to the producer, with a fair scale of prices 

 to the consumer. If the increasing population of the Nation is to be 

 fed from the available farm lands in the United States, the efforts 

 to reduce or eliminate such hazards must be prosecuted more vigor- 

 ously in the future than ever before, and the fundamental research 

 work which constitutes the basis of these efforts must have proper 

 appreciation and support, 



PLANT DISEASES. 



The toll exacted by plant diseases is appalling. Every season, 

 and in Substantially every important producing region, they con- 

 stitute a heavy handicap on crop production. When it is remem- 

 bered that the cost of producing diseased and healthy crops, up 

 to the time of harvest, is practically the same, it is clear that plant 

 diseases are a grievous and dangerous overload on our agriculture. 

 It has been estimated that in 1919 field diseases were responsible for 

 the loss of approximately 190,000,000 bushels of wheat, of 78,000,000 

 bushels of oats, of 200,000,000 bushels of corn, of 86,000,000 bushels 

 of potatoes, of 58,000,000 bushels of sweet potatoes, of 18,000,000 

 bushels of apples, and of 1,742,000 bales of cotton. The department 

 for many years has been doing everything possible to reduce these 

 and other losses, and excellent results have been secured in ciany 

 directions. 



One of the most significant activities now under way is the effort to 

 reduce the tremendous losses from wheat rust, aggregating in some 

 years as much as 200,000,000 bushels. Scientific investigation has 

 proved that the fungus which is responsible for the disease gets its 



