must show how to make good the scarcity of food 
supply. To this occupation the country must look 
not only for bread but for employment, for the 
means of advancement, for stability of institu- 
tions and for individual happiness. The farmer 
must furnish an additional $600,000,000 which we 
have seen will be necessary by 1950 to sustain the 
people. The task is stupendous. Yet it will not 
be found very difficult if we go to work in the right 
way. 
I have stated the national problem in terms of 
wheat; its solution admits of similar statement. 
The average yield of wheat per acre in the United 
States in 1907 was 14 bushels. The average for 
the last ten years has been 13.88. That is, in 1907 
it required 45,211,000 acres to produce the 634,- 
087,000 bushels that we raised. It is a disgrace- 
ful record. About a century ago this was the av- 
erage production per acre of Great Britain. Aft- 
er the appointment of a Royal Commission and 
a campaign for better methods of cultivation be- 
gun over a hundred years ago, today the fields of 
the United Kingdom, tilled for a thousand years, 
in a climate whose excessive moisture is unfavor- 
able to the wheat farmer, yield over 32 bushels of 
wheat per acre. Germany, an agricultural coun- 
try almost since the time of Tacitus, produces 
27.6 bushels per acre. Suppose that the United 
States produced 28 bushels, or double its present 
showing. That would be no extraordinary record, 
13 
