b 



BUREAU OF CROP ESTIMATES. 317 



Strawberries, commercial acreage and production. June, 1918. 



Swine losses 1884-1918, chart. April, 1918. 



Trend of crop prices, farm wages, and land values, 1909-1917. April, 1918. 



Truck crops, winter condition. December, 1917. 



Wages of mrm labor. March, 1918. 



Wheat exports monthly, 1910-1917. March, 1918. 



Wheat fed to live stock. March 1918. 



Wheat, maximum yield. July, 1918. 



Wheat, monthly farm movement. November, 1917; March, 1918. 



Wheat prices in England, yearly since 1859. November, 1917. 



Wheat prices, monthly, 1910-1917. November, 1917. 



Wheat, surplus and deficiency, by States. October, 1917. 



Wheat, where held monthly. March, 1917. 



When farmers sell their crops. August, 1917. i 



Winter wheat, acreage planted and harvested yearly. July, 1918. 



TRIBUTE TO AMERICAN FARMERS. 



Perhaps no branch of the pubUc service is in position to recognize 

 so promptly and appreciate so fully as the Bureau of Crop Estimates 

 what has bpen accomplished by the farmers of the United States 

 since the breaking out of the world war. From the reports of its 

 thousands of voluntary crop reporters and its field agents who travel 

 over each State and report weeldy and monthly their observations, the 

 bureau is in constant touch with the progress of crop production from 

 month to month and year to year. It has seen the supply of farm 

 labor steadily decrease from heavy drafts made upon it by other 

 industries, especially since the beginning of the war, and it has noted 

 the decrease in the supply of commercial fertilizers. It has noted 

 also the steady rise in farm wages, and in prices of farm machinery 

 and everything else that farmers have to buy. With an unbounded 

 faith in the patriotism and determination of farmers to do their 

 utmost to help win the war by maintaining the production of food 

 and raw materials, it nevertheless has marveled that the farmers of 

 the United States apparently have accomplished the impossible by 

 continuing to plant larger areas and to harvest larger crops in the 

 aggregate with each year of the war in spite of the difficulties of 

 securing farm labor, supplies, machinery, and other necessary 

 articles. 



The planting and cultivating of 32,000,000 acres more in 1917 

 than in 1914 hj the farmers of this country is comparable with the 

 phenomenal increase in the military forces, or with anything that 

 has been accomplished by any other industry, not excepting the 

 building of ships, or the manufacture of munitions and supplies, for 

 the tremendous increase in agriculture was accomplished with fewer 

 and fewer men, while the other industries constantly increased their 

 man power. 



This great achievement of American farmers is not so spectacular 

 nor has it received the same publicity and recognition as the launching 

 of some hundreds of new ships, the manufacture of large quantities 

 of munitions, air planes, and Liberty motors, or the transport of un- 

 precedented numbers of troops overseas, because the preparation of 

 the soil, and the planting, cultivating, and harvesting of crops are 

 slow processes and are not concentrated in time and place under 

 direct observation nor heralded to the people by the press. Never- 

 theless, this production^of food crops on an enlarged scale, at greatly 

 increased expense of time, effort, and labor and by fewer men, 



