8 FOOD AND POPULATION. 



The writer is not aware that until within two years an attempt had ever been made 

 to determine the proportion of land required in each staple for the subsistence of a given 

 number of people and was led to make tentative coniputatious of acreage requirements 

 per capita for the purpose of ascertaining what relation the domestic consumption of each 

 staple bore to the total of land under cultivation, as well as to determine liow soon the 

 area employed in the production of food for exportation would be required to supply food 

 for home needs, and has been able to ascertain from the total production during the ninth 

 decade— less the quantities exported— that the yearly requiremeuts per capita for domestic 

 consumption have been the product of 1.19 acres of corn, .48 of an acre of wheat, .39 of 

 an acre of oats, .64 of au acre of hay, .11 of an acre of cotton and .15 of an acre in rye, 

 barley, bucliwheat, potatoes and tobacco (to which should be added .20 of an acre for the 

 cotton exported), and such acreage ratios can not be disturbed without afTecting prices; 

 except as relates to such products as are produced in excess of domestic requirements, and 

 tlien the price will be subject to change as the relationship of such product, to the whole 

 bread-oating population, is affected by (he world's supply, largely irrespective of the local 

 supply, as has so often been the case with wheat. 



If, by diverting land to wheat, we should reduce the corn area below 1.19 acres per 

 capita the price of corn would advance, and should such diversion proceed far, or be long 

 continued, the price of corn would become relatively much higher tlian that for wheat, as 

 is now the case in Argentina, where the corn crop having failed wheat and maize are 

 being sold at the same price per bushel, when the i)arity of prices is about two and a half 

 to one. 



Having a surplus acreage in corn and tlie world's very deficient wlieat acreage as- 

 iuring a very high price for that grain, it would be wise to divert two or three million 

 acres of the corn land to wheat for a year or so and thus greatly advance the price of corn, 

 but such laud must revert to corn not later than 1893 or 1S94 as increasing requirements 

 are such as to absorb the product of 1,800.000 additional acres of corn each year and the 

 surplus corn area is now less than 2,000,000 acres. 



When this surplus acreage has been absorbed we must yearly trench upon tlie wheat 

 fields for the needed additions to the corn area, as there is but little new corn laud to be 

 brought under cultivation and wheat is the ouly staple, other than corn and cotton, of 

 whieli there is an acreage the product of wliich is exported, and we siiall certainly supply 

 home needs before attempting to furnish Europe with either bread or meat. 



Of 39,000,000 acres in wheat 1,000,000 have, within a year, been taken from the corn 

 arL-a. and, as in 1895, we shall, for domestic consumption, require the product of butabout 

 34,1)00,000 acres in wheat and needing to add 1,800,000 acres per year to the corn area, it 

 would appear that to furnish the needed corn we must, before 1896, have taken from the 

 wheat area the 5,000,000 surplus acres, hence it does not seem likely that we can export 

 any part of the .staple products of our fields after 189.5 except cotton and tobacco. 



Part of the wheat acreage must be thus diverted or the domestic consumption of all 

 the other staples be reduced, as the additions to the acreage are so far from meeting the 

 requirements of current additions to the population that the entire acreage now producing 

 food for export will have been absorbed by domestic consumption within five years^ 

 hence it follows that the exportation of food must then cease or we must lower the stand- 

 ard of living. 



That tlie arable areas of Europe are very fully occupied is made manifest in the 

 table showing European crop acreages, and while some increase of the cultivated area 

 may be expected in Eastern Europe, it is not likely to more than keep p.ace with local re- 

 quirements. Other than this any material expansion is improbable. Nor can tlie meadows 

 and other fields be diverted to wheat production without causing a scarcity of products 

 quite as necessary and which have beeu displacing wlieat in Western Europe, as wheat 

 would better bear carriage and could bo more readily procured from abroad. 



lu .South America are large areas adapted to cereal culture, of which less than 

 5,000.000 acres are employed in growing wheat, and about the same area in other crops, 

 the whole of temperate South America having less laud in cultivation than has Nebraska, 

 and this region will have made quite as much progress as can be expected if thocultivated 



