4'4 



NATURE 



[September 30, 1909 



for as woulil >aiisfy ihe larger mass ol consumers calcu- 

 lated for as likely to be dependent upon wheat in ign 

 or 1931 on ihe scale here laid down? 



I should not, in any statistical investigation into these 

 questions, be contented to assume the probability of the 

 exact continuance of previous ratios in the rate of pro- 

 duction, or that of individual consumption over such 

 periods, and my experience of very big averages makes me 

 shy of adopting a simple mean of such wide diversities as 

 correctly representing the head-rate consumption of wheat. 

 These are points which might be more fittingly debated 

 elsewhere. I want to narrow the issue now to the actual 

 and more recent course of the wheat-growing surface ; for 

 it seems to me that the lesson of such figures as we have 

 in the past, and as those of Mr. Wood Davis's tables, is 

 rather one of irregular than of arrested extension. The 

 periodical opening up of new areas, very often in advance 

 of consumptive requirements of the time, would seem 

 almost invariably to be followed by a pause while prices 

 recover from the over-supply, and that again by new 

 developments and exploitation in new directions, or by 

 better methods on the areas made tributary to the wants 

 of the ever-increasing men. 



We may admit that the course of the wheat acreage 

 from 1870 to :884 and thence onward to i8q8 showed — 

 first, a material advance outstripping that of population, 

 then an admitted and serious check, with a subsequent 

 advance, although one below that of the bread consumers 

 of the world. 



Let me ask, however, if a later view of the wheat area 

 at the disposal of the world's consumers is not well 

 qualified materially to diminish, if not to dissipate, the 

 *' cosmic scare " which, no doubt contrary to the real 

 design of the distinguished chemist who followed Mr. 

 Davis's estimates, was induced by the figures of i8g8? 

 My own comparisons of the later growth of acreage covers 

 only the decade from 1897 to 1907, or as nearly to these 

 years as figures permit, and in the form I originally 

 designed it might bring into view something less than 

 230,000,000 acres as the world's present extent of wheat- 

 field. But, to place matters on a more comparative level, 

 I am willing to omit the large Indian totals and some few 

 of the distant regions which, partly on account of the 

 somewhat uncertain identity of the areas they include at 

 different dates, and partly on account of their relatively 

 small contribution to the bread of the Western world, do 

 not find a place in the estimates with which I am now 

 making a coinparison. For the leading groups of other 

 areas the figures stand in millions of acres to a single 

 decimal : — 



Total 



159-2 



193-5 



34-, 



Now, whatever be the estimated increase in wheat- 

 eating population between these two dates, it cannot in 

 the aggregate be 212 per cent., as is the growth of the 

 wheat surface in these States. Nor would the result be 

 materially affected if allowance were to be made for the 

 three or four million acres represented by the exports of 

 unnamed States in this table, or even by the inclusion of 

 any minor units of wheat-growing, such as Portugal, or 

 Greece, or Switzerland, for which Mr. Wood Davis 

 estimated from sources not recognised in our official 

 statistics, their totals being well under a single million 

 acres, and the variation, if any, probably insignificant. 



If, therefore, the growth of men outstripped the growth 

 of wheat, as we have been warned was the case between 

 1884 and 1897, the growth of wheatfields has been well 

 over the rate of population increase since that exceptional 

 period, just as it was in the still earlier period between 

 1871 and 1884. Nor is the check to the rye acreage and 

 its decline by 4 per cent., which seemed to have happened 



NO. 2083, VOL. 81] 



concurrently with the wheat check between 18S4-97, con- 

 tinuing ; for that, in the aggregate, seems to have re- 

 turned to, though it has not perhaps much exceeded, the 

 older level. 



Comparisons at single terminal points have always a 

 danger which may be avoided by examining more care- 

 fully the leading facts year by year. On the diagram 

 which I introduce here I have tried, therefore, roughly to 

 sketch the curves which indicate the growth of wheat 

 acreage, both before and since 1898, in Russia, the United 

 States, Argentina, .Australia, and Canada, as typical of the 

 exporting centres, while the acreage in France and Hungary 

 has been added for comparison. The effect is, I think, to 

 bring out the vei'y much greater extension which has been 

 going on during the last decade than could well have been 

 looked for on the basis of the 1884-97 figures. 



For the Russian Empire as a whole data are available 

 only since 1895, but I have shown by a separate and 

 steadily mounting line the wheat area of the fifty govern- 

 ments of European Russia, which are comparative for the 

 entire period, and the latter are quite sufficient to establish 

 my conclusion. There is, too, a suggestiveness about the 

 course of prices (in shillings per quarter) in England, the 

 chief recipient of wheat exports, which I have traced by 

 a separate curve across this diagram. This may perhaps 

 aid those who are disposed to make a closer study of the 

 figures. That study may not improbably suggest that in 

 the very latest year — for I have carried the diagram to 

 1908 where I can — we may be once again nearing another 

 check, or temporary halt, in the course of wheat extension, 

 such as that which puzzled inquirers more than ten years 

 ago, but which proved only a pause in the task of finding 

 all the bread the consumers wanted under the stimulus 

 of better prices. The further leap of prices in 1909 to 

 beyond the 40^. limit in England may effectively encourage 

 extension. 



The exceptional arrest of wheat-growing in the United 

 States between the years 1880-96, when — if we may accept 

 the official statistics as actually representing fact — the rapid 

 rise, which actually doubled the wheat acreage between 

 1870 to 1880, stopped altogether, was, I believe, the pre- 

 ponderating factor which suggested a general halt in 

 wheat-growing. It should therefore be looked at more 

 closely, and to get rid of the danger of attaching too much 

 importance to the data of single years, the quinquennial 



