USES OF LAND 167 



regions. Some authorities maintain, therefore, that beet sugar 

 cannot in the future compete successfully with cane sugar. 1 



(e) FIBRE CROPS. 



Some reference has already been made to the demands of the 

 cotton crop upon agricultural lands in the United States. Outside 

 the United States, the area throughout the world devoted to cotton, 

 that could profitably be utilised for the rearing of animals or for 

 producing surplus animal feedstuffs, is not great. The average 

 acreage under cotton in recent years in the United States has been 

 about 35 million acres, and the crop is such that it requires rich 

 land and is exhaustive of soil fertility. However, it is the seed 

 rather than the fibre that drains the richness of the soil. A large 

 part of the American cotton-seed output is crushed, thereby 

 furnishing oil for human consumption and oil-cake and meal for 

 live-stock. Though the nutrient value of cotton-seed is high, it 

 can hardly be maintained that the land annually under cotton is 

 producing in this way as great a quantity of animal feedstuffs as 

 would be obtainable from other crops such as maize, sorghum, 

 etc., 2 if these were given as favourable treatment in fertilisers and 

 cultivation. Cotton-seed oil is an important article of commerce 

 that enters, it is true, largely into human diet in various forms, 

 but there exist other sources of edible oils, as has been shown, and 

 these sources which are constantly growing in importance are not 

 generally suitable for animal industries. Any extension, therefore, 

 in the area devoted to cotton in North America or in other tem- 

 perate countries must, on the whole, be regarded as being unfavour- 

 able to those branches of agriculture concerned with the production 

 of food, and especially perhaps to animal industries, since in the 

 United States the cotton belt has tended to move westwards and 

 to invade what were formerly cattle ranching lands. 3 On the 

 other hand, within the cotton belt, the threatened exhaustion of 

 the soil through continuous cropping with cotton has begun to 

 make rotation farming with fodder crops and animal industries 

 necessary. 4 The United States Department of Agriculture has 

 instituted something like a campaign in favour of the extension 

 of beef production and dairying in the Southern States in combina- 

 tion with cotton cultivation. 4 The future extensions of cotton 

 growing throughout the world are much more likely to take place 

 in tropical and sub-tropical regions in Africa, Southern Asia, Brazil, 

 and Northern Australia ; in districts, that is to say, not utilised 

 to any great extent at present for animal-rearing. So far as ex- 



* See E. Hahn, Die Wirtschaft der Welt am Ausgange des 19 ten Jahrhunderts," 

 p. 79. 



a More especially as an appreciable part of the cotton-seed is returned to 

 the land as fertiliser. 



3 See A. P. Brigham, Commercial Geography, 1911, p. 24. 



* See U.S. Dept. Agric. Year Book, 1913, pp. 259-283. 



Ibid., Animal Industry Report, 1907, pp. 307 et seq., and Farmers' Bulletins, 

 Nr-s. 349, 411, 580, and 655. 



