CHAPTER IV. 



TEMPERATE SURPLUS-PRODUCING REGIONS. 



(a) UNITED STATES. 



MOST of the surplus-producing countries belonging to Group 

 I, described above, are still in the earlier stages of develop- 

 ment. They have not yet reached their maximum output 

 or surplus, though the future increases will probably be smaller 

 and slower than those already made. The United States, however, 

 owing to rapid industrialisation forms a remarkable exception. 

 Except for specialised products, such as pig-meat and animal fats 

 and oils, it tended, prior to 1915, to import rather than to export 

 animal foodstuffs ; J and there is little likelihood that its output of 

 these foodstuffs will increase in the future to such an extent as to 

 render heavier permanent exports of them possible. 2 It must always 

 be remembered, nevertheless, that the United States still is, and may 

 well remain for some years to come, an important source of surplus 

 animal feedstuffs, including cotton-seed and its products. 



Interest attaches to the United States as being the first, and for 

 many years the most striking example, of a new country with 

 surplus animal produce for export. The period of greatest meat 

 surplus produce was reached in 1898-1902, when the total exports 

 of meat and meat products averaged nearly one million tons (2,209 

 million Ibs.) per annum. This huge export fell to an average of 1,903 

 million Ibs. for the years 1903-06, but this smaller quantity had a 

 greater export value. By 1910 the exports of meat except of 

 pig-meat and of fats and oils had practically ceased ; still the total 



1 The exports of pig-meat and lard from the United States have continued 

 it is true, to be very heavy, and are such as to make the United States much 

 the most important source of surplus supplies of these products, and even to 

 cause that country to retain a very high place among meat-exporting countries, 

 when all kinds of meat are reckoned together. Thus in the years 1910-1914 

 the United States furnished about one-third of the world's total exports of 

 meat and meat products. Nevertheless, in 1914 the United States were de- 

 ficient in no less than four important kinds of animal foodstuffs ; in that year 

 there were net imports of beef, mutton, cheese and butter. 



2 The changes in the per capita production of typical feedstuff crops serve 

 as some indication of the tendencies in progress in the output of animal 

 industries relative to population. Between 1889 and 1914 the per capita 

 production of maize in the United States fell from 33-7 to 27-2 bushels ; of oats, 

 from 12-9 to 11-6 bushels ; of hay, from 1-1 tons to -7 tons ; while that of barley 

 rose from 1-2 to 2-0 bushels. 



TLe stimulus afforded by high prices and other conditions during the pre- 

 sent war has, however, caused a remarkable increase in the American surplus 

 of animal foodstuffs. This appears to be due, in part at least, to economies 

 effected both in production and in. consumption, but it is also due to a decline 

 in immigration, to the departure of large numbers of citizens as soldiers to 

 Europe, to some unusually good harvests, and more especially to a practical 

 cessation of the export trade in feedstuffs. 



