A Graphic Summary of American Agriculture. 



31 



Fig. 27. — Com is tJie great American cereal, constituting alx)ut 60 per cent of the 

 tonnage of all cereals grown in the United States, and over 50 per cent of the value. 

 More than half of this crop is produced in the Corn Belt : but corn is the leading crop 

 in value also in the Corn and Winter Wheat Belt, and is the all-important cereal in 

 the Cotton Belt. Corn is a very productive crop, yielding, in general, about twice as 

 many pounds of grain per acre as wheat, oats, barley, or rye. The climate and soil of 

 the Corn Belt are peculiarly suited to it. Pi-ol>ably no other area in tJie world of 

 equal extent produces so much food per square mile as the Corn Belt. (See Figs. 21 

 and 104.) 



Fig. 28. — In the Corn Belt most of the corn is fed to hogs, cattle, and horses on the 

 Bame farm that it is grown (.see figs. 89. 81, and 76) ; but a considerable quantity, 

 amounting to 41 per cent of the crop in Illinois in 1919, and about 30 per cent in Iowa, 

 South Dakota, and Nebraska, is sold to noiirby farmers, is shipped to consumers in thi- 

 South and East, is exported largely through Chicago and tlie Atlantic ports, or is made 

 into starch and glucose. The corn which the map indicates as sold from the farms in 

 Pennsylvania. Maryland, and several Southern States, consists mostly of sales to neigh- 

 boring farmers. Farms near the water front in Maryland and Virginia, however, ship 

 corn by water to Baltimore, whence it is exported. 



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