CHAPTER IX 



PRACTICAL BIOLOGY OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION 

 AND CIVIC UTILIZATION OF LAND 



Public prosperity is like a tree : agriculture is its roots ; industry and com- 

 merce are its branches and leaves. If the root suffers, the leaves fall, the 

 branches break, and the tree dies. Chinese saying, from HOPKINS, "Soil 

 Fertility and Permanent Agriculture " 



In final analysis civilizations rest mainly upon agricultural 

 efficiency. At least, this must be increasingly true as civiliza- 

 tion advances. In this vital matter it is high time to cast 

 aside all pride and conceit and wake up to a sense of our 

 low agricultural efficiency as a people. In 1907 a total of 

 20,000 square miles of agricultural land in Japan supported 

 46,977,003 people, or 2349 people to the square mile, with 

 less than one dollar per capita excess of agricultural imports 

 over exports. Fertile regions of both China and Japan sup- 

 port as high as 3840 people per square mile. Compare these 

 figures with those for Belgium, the most densely populated 

 country in Europe ; here less than 300 people per square 

 mile are supported. The best farming districts of the United 

 States support about 30 people per square mile. 



Further, in little more than a brief century we have swept 

 over a continent rich in the accumulated fertility of many 

 thousands of years, and in ignorance have wasted and depleted 

 (" mined " rather than " cultivated ") the soil. As land in one 

 region has been mined out, we have abandoned it and moved 

 to virgin fields, but now, with practically no more new land 

 available, we are forced to turn toward the more civilizing 

 and socially ethical task of permanent American agriculture. 



91 



