48 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



roughly relative costs, are able to choose wisely from a given 

 group of competing crops. These prices are the resultant of 

 the forces lying behind demand and supply. Assuming a 

 demand, the supply of a given commodity is influenced by the 

 extent of the area available for its production within the terri- 

 tory competing on the same markets. In the case of the great 

 staples the market is world-wide. Hence a knowledge of the 

 agricultural geography of the world is essential to a well-bal- 

 anced judgment on the question of probable price relations. 



Let us compare the four competing crops, — cotton, Indian 

 corn, sugar beets, and potatoes, — with regard to the extent of 

 territory available. The areas available for corn and cotton 

 overlap, but the area available for cotton culture is more limited 

 than the area available for growing Indian corn. If cotton were 

 to be excluded wherever Indian corn can be grown, the cotton 

 supply would be very small, whereas corn can be produced in 

 enormous quantities outside of the potential cotton regions. 

 The result is that the relative prices of cotton and corn tend to 

 be such that cotton will pay better than corn on the best cotton 

 lands and the extent of the area planted to cotton and the extent 

 to which cotton will drive corn out of their common territory 

 will depend upon the relative demand for these two products. 

 History shows that corn has not found a place on the best 

 cotton land of the South as a commercial crop. It may pay 

 to grow corn for home use in the cotton belt, and not pay to 

 grow it to sell or for commercial hog or cattle production. 

 Again, a small amount of corn may be grown on a cotton farm 

 without limiting the cotton area which one family can handle. 

 This is because a family can grow more cotton than it can pick, 

 and a small amount of corn may be supplementary to cotton. 

 It is this commercial demand for cotton and the fact that cotton 

 conflicts with the commercial growing of all other crops that 

 has had much to do in forcing upon the South the one crop 

 system with all its disadvantages of probable soil depletion and 

 the risk of crop failure of price depression. Whenever cotton 

 prices have been low, some planters have given more attention 

 to other crops. This has limited the supply of cotton and re- 



