CHAPTER XII 

 CEREAL ADAPTATION AND ASSOCIATION 



IN the immediately preceding chapters, certain soil and 

 climatic features are discussed, which characterize those 

 regions where cereal crops are most perfectly adapted. 

 These areas may be considered as cereal crop zones or 

 natural cereal regions. 



ADAPTATION 



293. Cereal regions. The most important of the 

 natural cereal regions, located in a very approximate 

 way, of course, are as follows : the Great Plains of 

 North America, the Russian Chernozem, the Chaco- 

 Pampean Plains of Argentina, Australasia, the Indo- 

 Gangetic Plains of India, the Balkan-Hungarian region, 

 the Mediterranean region, the east China-Japan region, 

 and Turkestan (Fig. 80). There are other areas which 

 must be considered in this connection for special reasons, 

 though they are not perfectly adapted for cereal cultiva- 

 tion. On the one hand, there are the German- Austrian 

 and the French-Italian regions, which produce a large 

 quantity of cereals by virtue of intensive farming, atten- 

 tion to soil fertility, and constant pressure of food demand. 

 Their proportional production, however, is gradually de- 

 creasing. On the other hand, there are other regions 

 which are either well suited for cereals or deserve mention 



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