CHAPTER VI. 

 YIELD AND COST OF PRODUCTION 



YIELD. 



Factors Increasing Yield. As farming methods are improved, 

 the yield of wheat per acre is being increased. Some of the 

 main factors causing the increase are: (1) The use of drills in 

 seeding results in greater immunity against drought and winter- 

 killing, especially if press drills are used; (2) crop rotation; 

 (3) improved methods in plowing and cultivation; (4) improve- 

 ment of seed by natural and artificial selection, and by hybridi- 

 zation; (5) fertilizing; (6) irrigation; and (7) tile drainage. 



Factors Decreasing Yield. Nearly all of the factors just 

 mentioned are inoperative in a new country, for their product 

 gives intensive cultivation, while extensive cultivation is always 

 characteristic of a new country under ordinary conditions. The 

 yield is always low under extensive methods of farming. Such 

 methods lower the fertility of the soil and a further decrease in 

 yield results. The rapid improvement in farm machinery has 

 favored extensive cultivation. It has also cheapened the cost 

 of production, so that comparatively poor grades of land which 

 it was previously unprofitable to work can now be farmed at a 

 fair rate of profit. The operation of these factors is perhaps 

 best shown by the wheat statistics of Australia. 



From 1873 to 1898 the acreage of all the provinces of Aus- 

 tralia except that of Tasmania increased, in some very greatly, 

 while in every province (except Tasmania, where there was a 

 decrease in acreage until the last eight years of the period), 

 the yield decreased, in some cases over one-third. During the 

 ninth decade in New South Wales the increase in acreage was 

 slight and the decrease in yield insignificant, but in the next 

 eight years the acreage increased nearly fourfold, while the 

 yield fell off about one-third. The apparent lack of correlation 

 between increase in acreage and decrease in yield in one or two 

 of the provinces is doubtless due to some other factors. 



The yield of wheat per acre in different countries is shown 

 in the following table. 1 Figures in parentheses show limits to 



100 



