10 Jan., 1919.] America and Australia Compared. 7 



Diversified Agriculture. 

 The most striking and impressive feature of American agriculture, 

 as contrasted with our own, is the extent to which its agriculture is 

 diversified. 



"Wheat is our great staple crop and our export crop. The success 

 or failure of the wheat crop to a large extent determines the financial 

 _ condition of the country. But America is neither a one-crop country 

 nor a one-stock country, but is a land with a great variety of crop 

 production, and is equally strong in live stock production. Maize, 

 cotton, hay, wheat, oats, lucerne, harlby, flax, s\igar, tobacco, and fruit 

 are grown over enormous areas, each type of crop, however, being 

 confined to the region in which it thrives best. 



The eastern half of the United States is humid, the western half 

 dry. The agriculture of the humid east is based on annual summer 

 crops. Maize is the principal crop. In the arid west the agriculture 

 is based on grazing, winter-grown crops, and irrigated summer crops. 



Corn, or maize, is America's greatest crop. This is grown because 

 the soil and climate suit it so Avell. I propose to give the production 

 of a number of these staple crops in order to give you some idea of 

 what a country the same size as Australia may produce when it is 

 fairly on the way towards proper agricultural development. The maize 

 crop of the United States amounts to 3,000,000,000 bushels. 



Suppose this maize were placed in five-ton waggons, and placed end 

 to end, then the line of waggons would extend for 50,000 miles — or twice 

 round the globe. Eighty per cent, of this stupendous quantity is fed 

 to stock. In addition to this 900,000,000 bushels of wheat are annually 

 produced — nine times as much as we normally produce in Australia. 



The oat crop amounts to 1,500,000,000 bushels — more than 100 

 times the quantity we produce in Australia. 



The hay crop of America is immense. Last year it was 85,000,000 

 tons. This is about 25 times as much hay as is cut in the whole 

 Commonwealth of Australia. 



To visualize this much hay, imagine a stack of hay 7 yards broad 

 and 7 yards high, stretching from here to London. The stack would be 

 12,000 miles long. That would represent the amount of hay cut last 

 spring by the farmers of America. A stack extending from Melbourne 

 to Adelaide would accommodate the Australian crop. 



The cotton crop amounted to 16,000,000 bales. Cotton is one of 

 the competitors of our Australian wool. The American farmers plucked 

 by hand from the cotton plants of the South an amount of cotton, ten 

 times as great as the entire wool clip of Australia. 



Irrigation. 



Irrigation is extensively practised in the United States. Were it 

 not for the harnessing of the rivers and their diversion over the arid 

 soils of the West, it is certain that the Western States would be sparsely 

 settled, and consist mainly of sheep and cattle ranches, rather than 

 centres of compact settlement. 



Considerably over 4,000,000 acres of land in Western America are 

 now being irrigated, i.e., more land is placed under irrigation than the 

 whole area sown in Victoria to wheat, barley, oats and hay. 



