98 THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM 



60 per cent., the United States i per cent. ; in oats 85 

 per cent., the United States 6 per cent. ; in potatoes 80 

 per cent., the United States 7 per cent. 



" Mr. President, Germany has an area equal only to 

 the three States of Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri, 

 but she produced three-fifths as much oats, four-fifths 

 as much barley, three times as much sugar, six times 

 as many potatoes, and nine times as much rye as we 

 produced in the whole United States. 



" Let me state it in another way. In 1907 Ger- 

 many had 43,000,000 acres sowed with wheat, barley, 

 oats, and potatoes. She harvested therefrom 3,000,- 

 000,000 bushels. We had under cultivation 88,500,- 

 ooo acres more than twice as many acres as Ger- 

 many and sowed the same crop. The American 

 farmer harvested only 1,875,000,000 bushels. In 

 other words, from less than one-half the acreage 

 Germany harvested nearly double the number of bush- 

 els that we did. 



"If from the land we devoted to oats, barley, and 

 potatoes the American farmer had produced the same 

 per acre as was produced in Germany, we should have 

 been richer by $1,400,000,000 annually/' 



The most practical way to rejuvenate the soil of an 

 old farm in the Central West is with a treatment of 

 ground rock phosphate and crushed lime stone. In 

 amounts used most economically, these materials cost 

 from $25 to $30 per acre, and as this treatment must 

 be repeated at least once in five years about $5 to 

 $6 per acre per annum. Hence, if each farmer has 

 $100 per acre of his land to invest, it would require 

 the interest on same to keep the farm approximately 



