CROP YIELDS AND PRICES, AND OUR FUTURE 

 FOOD SUPPLY 



By Professor G. F. Warren, Cornell University 

 (From Bulletin 341, College of Agriculture, Cornell University) 



THE questions, whether our soil is exhausted and how we 

 are to be fed in the future, are constantly being discussed in 

 newspapers and magazines. The wildest sorts of statements are 

 being made. Statistics are so persistently misquoted and misused 

 that wrong impressions or absolute untruths are often accepted. 

 The farmer is blamed for not selling enough food, and in the 

 next breath is condemned for allowing any plant food to leave his 

 farm. Many public-spirited citizens are planning all manner of 

 solutions for existing conditions, sometimes with an entire mis- 

 conception of what such conditions are. In the midst of all the 

 excited discussion, it is well to stop long enough to examine the 

 available facts and find out where we stand. There are two, and 

 only two, sources of information on crop yields, the United States 

 Census Reports and the reports by the Bureau of Statistics of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture. 



CROP YIELDS 



Crop yields in the United States. The crop yields for the 

 United States as reported by the census are given in Table 1 . Of 

 the six major crops, three gave their highest yield at the last census 

 period and three had given a better yield at some previous period. 



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Crop yields east of the Mississippi River. When crop yields 

 for the entire United States are compared, the land considered in 

 1909 is different from that farmed in 1879. During that period, 



