692 TRANSACTIONS OF SUB-SECTION K. 
I own I was hardly prepared for this old nation’s progress in wheat- 
growing, and I have no doubt that I shall be told that Russia has been 
exchanging one form of bread corn for another ; in particular, that depend- 
ence on rye has decreased as production of wheat has grown. There is some 
truth undoubtedly in this, for the comparatively stationary character of 
the rye area indicates that the Russian people, increasing as they are and 
continuing still an export of rye to Germany and elsewhere, may themselves 
eat somewhat more wheat and rather less rye, and it is true also that a 
fluctuating record has attended the surface under the coarser and larger 
cereal crop. Its ‘low-water’ point—61,900,000 acres—occurs in 1893, 
while its present figure is 66,000,000 acres. Relatively, therefore, while the 
rye shows no progress such as wheat, it cannot be said that the rye area has 
been utilised for the more valuable cereal, and the fact remains that there 
is more rye grown to-day, even in European Russia, than at any date since 
the last decade of last century began. Relatively to population, the avail- 
able data show, the aggregate crops of wheat and rye together, in Russia as 
a whole, are materially greater than before. 
Inquiry shows that the wheat extension in Russia has been made possible 
by an actual addition to the arable land, and not by deduction from other 
crops. A recent investigation quoted by a competent American authority 
informs us that some 23,000,000 acres of new arable land has been accounted 
for between 1881 and 1904, and, moreover, that a greater surface of this 
nominally arable area is now actually under cultivation than at the earlier 
date. These figures stand :— 
Rye | 
| Year | Total Arable Land | Under Crop Wheat | 
acres / acres acres | acres 
1881 | 288,000,000 | 174,600,000 28,900,000 64,600,000 
1904 | 310,700,000 205,900,000 45,600,000 | 65,600,000 
It will be noted that this inquiry ends a year or two since, but had it 
been continued to 1906 the comparison would have been accentuated, and, 
as it stands, the additional area cropped in one way or another exceeds 
31,000,000 acres. 
In Mr. Wood Davis’s later memorandum he combats the idea that the 
expected wheat crops from four relatively new areas of production—Siberia, 
Argentina, Australasia, and Canada—would meet the shortage he found 
threatened by his estimate. Not unnaturally he regarded an 8,100,000 addi- 
tion of acres in these four regions in fifteen years as a very insufficient and 
unpromising quota to feed over ten times that number of new bread-eaters 
on the globe between 1883-4 and 1898-9. 
Assuming he rightly gave the increment of wheat between these dates as 
under, if I add to his table the latest data that I have, these new and 
gradually opening areas will show a rate of progress much greater in the 
nine succeeding years than before, even if there was no further increase in 
Siberia ; for as to the areas to be included there I am certain. The figures I 
give in millions of acres :— 
| . 
s 1888-84 | 1898-99 Fifteen years 1907-08 uae gee | 
| «Nh eae 5 oe A «| fae a) east pel EE Oeste ft | 
| siteund bien. 2-0 Saa0") 13 . 3°3 alae 
| Argentina.  . 1-4 cil 4-7 Das") des Alin 
Australasia. 3-2 45 | 1:3 yi BH Ooh aielieersel 
Canada. 2-4 32 | ‘8 I) 6:0. sid aaa 
Total. |) 90 | ata | 821 olf. 29°7 veal ee 
