162 PRODUCTION 



rearing industries by releasing for their use feedstuffs otherwise 

 consumed by horses, or what comes to the same thing, by setting 

 land previously devoted to horse feedstuffs free for the production 

 of crops suitable for food-producing animals, 1 or for cereals for 

 human consumption. 



The comparatively rapid increase in the area devoted to wheat 

 and rye in the leading producing countries has been made mainly 

 in response to demands for direct human consumption, though 

 poultry may have benefited incidentally also thereby. The process 

 has often involved the breaking up of possible or actual pasture 

 lands, and animal-rearing industries have in some measure been 

 driven elsewhere. The increase in the cultivation of maize and of 

 barley has also been considerable, but, as has been shown, the 

 increase in the areas under these crops has not been unfavourable 

 to animal industries on the whole, rather the reverse. 2 When 

 the five leading cereals of the temperate regions are considered 

 together, it seems almost certain that on the balance, food-producing 

 animal industries have lost rather than gained by their increased 

 production during the last twenty-five years. 



Should the recent increase in the production of these cereals be 

 maintained in the near future, the extent to which animal indus- 

 tries will be affected in competition will depend upon first, the 

 proportion of the total output utilised directly or indirectly as feed- 

 stuffs ; second, the average rate of the yield, and therefore the 

 area occupied by these cereals ; third, the extent to which advanced 

 intensive methods of mixed farming are practised, enabling both 

 cereals and animals to be produced under rotation cropping ; and 

 fourth, the extent to which additional feedstuffs can be drawn from 

 tropical countries. 



As an illustration of the tendencies and the possible future 

 developments, the example of the United States may once more be 

 quoted. That region has seen the most rapid agricultural develop- 

 ment known in the world, and a kind of cycle is already observable. 

 What were once remote western grazing districts were taken for 

 cereal crops till soil exhaustion was threatened. Then, food animals 

 once more became important under a more mixed type of farming. 

 Similarly also, the early-time cereal districts of the eastern section, 

 after being cropped extensively, were more or less abandoned, till 

 with the increase in stock-raising and especially of dairying, and 

 with improvements in the means of transport, making the use of 

 fertilisers and commercial feedstuffs more widely possible, they 

 have in some measure regained their strength, and are once more 

 considerable producers of crops, though now under a more careful 

 and better planned system. 



1 A calculation based upon data given in Farmers' Bulletin 459 of the U.S 

 Dept. of Agric. shows that in terras of the feed values consumed a day's 

 heavy work from a small horse is roughly equivalent to 2 gallons of milk 

 from a cow of about the same weight. 



2 The obvious result has been to favour an increase in pigs at the expense 

 of pasture-fed animals, especially sheep. 



