FOOD AND POPULATION. 



jier acre now yiehl Imt 14, the rciUiction being more limn 20 per cent, and due to continued 

 use without proper fortilizutinn. 



An increase in produeiion, due to better metbods, will come so slowl.v as to be of 

 little avail in relieving necessities tluit will soon be very pressing and to meet the require- 

 ments of llie near-by years we must depend largely upon an extension of the cultivated 

 area, hence it is pertinent to enquire where exist available lands, what are their extent, 

 and can the bread-eating world rely upon development keeping pace with increasing re- 

 quirements? 



Aside from lauds that may be brought into use for pasturage the writer has — in the 

 Forum for June, 1890, and elswhere— estimated that possibly 35,000,000 acres will, within 

 twenty years, be added to the area in the United States devoted to the production of sta- 

 ples, and while otflcials, employed to enquire into the extent of the irrigable lands of the 

 iirid districts, express the opinion that a great part of the arid areas can be profitably irri- 

 gated, yet their estimates are so extravagant as to be unworthy a moment's consideration 

 by one familiar with the arid regions, one such estimate being that 200,000,000 acres of 

 these wastes are susceptible of Irrigation. The utter recklessness of such an estimate will 

 be instantly apparent to one who has seen much of the arid area when he reflects that 

 such areas embrace less than 800,000,000 acres and that this estimate contemplates the re- 

 clamation of one acre out of four, when it is very doubtful If one acre in thirty can be 

 irrigated. 



If there are 35,000,000 acres which can, after providing for the pasturage of a due 

 proportion of horses, cattle and sheep, be, within twenty years, brought under the plow 

 and devoted to the production of food staples our population will have so increased as to 

 require the product of every such acre, as well as the 10,000,000 now employed in the pro- 

 duction of food for exportation, as each year's addition to the population will be 1,500,000 

 or more and consume the product of 4,500,000 acres, and if we are to continue the exporta- 

 tion of tobacco and cotton, in anything like present proportions, it will be necessary to 

 add nearly 5,000 000 new acres annually to the plowed fields, and this is more than double 

 the area now being added if the reports of the Agricultur.il Department are any criterion. 



Many suppose that when wheat becomes scarce it will only be necessary to divert 

 enough of the meadows and corn fields to its production to meet the increased require- 

 ments, but it would be impossible to conceive a more fallacious idea, as there exists a very 

 close and delicate relationship between population, consumption and production, and the 

 moment the proportions of this relationship are disturbed, either by a change in the ratio 

 of acreage, a reduction or increase of average acreage yield, by reason of more or less 

 favorable meteorological conditions, or an exacting foreign demand, that moment prices 

 will oscillate as have those of corn, oats and wheat during the last two years. 



As, for several previous years, the corn acreage of 1889 was much in excess of do- 

 mestic requirements, and the season being exceptionably favorable, the per capita supply 

 was nearly 35 bushels against requirements — domestic and foreign — of something less 

 than 30 bushels, and the result was a large surplus with prices sinking to the lowest level 

 known since the civil war. 



In 1890 climatic conditions were the reverse of those of the previous year and the 

 aggregate out-turn of corn a fourth less, the result being scarcity, high prices and the 

 sending to the shambles of hecatombs of half-grown cattle and swine that the farmer 

 lacked the corn to fatten. 



The relationship between supply and demand is accurately, if unconciously, adjusted 

 by the farmer as he devotes his land to such products as bring the best returns and when 

 the area in any staple is reduced below the needs of the population just so soon the price 

 of such product will become relatively higher than that by which it has been displaced, 

 hence when a staple so important as wheat becomes scarce and high in price so will ad- 

 vance the price of all staples; otherwise all the land would gravitate to the production of 

 the more profitable one, and yet, while the farmer adjusts his crops to meet a growing or 

 lessemnir demand for the various staples, the short seller of the Boardl of Trade fixes the 

 price a-* which such nroducts shall be sold. 



