IMPORTANCE OF OATS 



169 



field crops, falling below corn, cotton, hay, and wheat. The 

 average annual area devoted to the production of oats in 

 the United States for the ten years from 1908 to 1917 was 

 38,367,000 acres; the average annual yield, 31.2 bushels to 

 the acre; average total production, 1,199,226,000 bushels; 

 and average farm value on December 1st, $527,770,000. 

 The ten leading states in production are shown in Table X. 



Table X. Average annual acreage, production, and farm value 

 and mean acre yield of oats in the ten states of largest production 

 for the ten years from 1908 to 1917. 



As shown by Table X . and Figure 66, the leading states 

 in the production of oats are Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Wis- 

 consin, and Nebraska. These five states produce nearly 

 half of the entire oat crop of the country, while the first four, 

 comprising the central portion of the upper Mississippi 

 Valley, produce more than 500,000,000 bushels, or about 

 one ninth of the entire production of the world. The per- 

 centage of the total crop of the United States which is pro- 

 duced by each of the important states is shown graphically 

 in Figure 67. 



More than 10 per cent of the total land area of Iowa and 

 Illinois is annually devoted to the production of oats, while 



