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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



the animal product factories employed 

 119,000 people and yielded an output 

 valued at $1,700,000,000. 



The total products of the farms of the 

 United States that year amounted to 

 more than all the gold mines of the world 

 have yielded in six centuries (see page 

 32). 



BUMPER CROPS AND PRICES 



The world's normal yield of the six 

 great cereal crops — oats, wheat, corn, rye, 

 barley, and rice — ranges between sixteen 

 billion and nineteen billion bushels, and 

 statistics show that the farmer gets less 

 ordinarily for his big crop than he re- 

 ceives for his small one. 



Excluding rice, we find that the 191 1 

 cereal crop amounted to 13,786,000,000 

 bushels. The average value per bushel, 

 based on the average farm price for the 

 United States on December 1, was 72.9 

 cents, giving a total crop value of $10,- 

 030,000,000. The crop of 191 2 was the 

 bumper crop of the world's history, 

 reaching a total of 16,115,000,000 bush- 

 els. The average farm price on Decem- 

 ber i, 19 1 2, in the United States, was 54.7 

 cents per bushel, showing a world crop 

 value of $9,814,000,000. 



In other words, the farmers of the 

 world handled 2,329,000,000 bushels more 

 of grain in 1912 than in 191 1, and yet 

 they got $1,216,000,000 less for the big 

 crop than for the small one. 



The same condition is shown in a com- 

 parison of the statistics for 1906 and 

 1907. Although the world's farmers pro- 

 duced three-quarters of a billion bushels 

 of grain less in the latter year than in the 

 former, they received nearly two billion 

 dollars less for the large crop of 1906 

 than for the small one of 1907. 



THE WORLD'S WHEAT CROP 



Though man shall not live by bread 

 alone, western civilization would find it 

 very difficult to get along without wheat 

 and its products. Although the wheat 

 plant is not of western origin, it has be- 

 come mainly a western product, march- 

 ing hand in hand with western civiliza- 

 tion. The world's total production of 

 wheat approximates 4,000,000,000 bush- 

 els a year. It would take 4,000.000 of 



the largest freight cars, making a train 

 reaching more than one and one-half 

 times around the earth, to move this great 

 annual yield. Moving at twenty miles 

 an hour, this train would take thirty-odd 

 days to pass a given point. 



The wheat crop of the United States is 

 approximately one-fifth of that of the 

 entire world. It would seem that with 

 the development of the northwestern part 

 of this country, wheat had at last reached 

 its limit of cultivation on American soil; 

 but those who have studied the question 

 most closely tell us that the wheat-grow- 

 ing industry has heretofore simply fol- 

 lowed the lines of least resistance, pick- 

 ing out here and there the lands v best 

 suited for wheat growing; and that since 

 all the choicest land has been opened up, 

 the wheat growers will gradually drift 

 back and take up the less available lands 

 that they passed over in looking for the 

 best (see page 34). 



Not only will the trend of the wheat 

 field be east and south, but it is certain to 

 reach farther and farther into what is 

 now the semi-arid regions of the West. 

 Between its extension into the desert 

 through irrigation and its advance into 

 the semi-desert through the introduction 

 of hardy, drought - resisting varieties, 

 America is afar off from the time when 

 the potential acreage and yield of her 

 wheat fields is reached. 



It is estimated that it will be easily pos- 

 sible for the United States to double its 

 wheat-growing area. That would give 

 us an average which, when we approxi- 

 mate western European standards in 

 wheat growing, will yield very nearly as 

 much wheat as the whole world produces 

 today. 



It has been strikingly said that he who 

 can add a grain of wheat to each head in 

 the world's wheat fields can give bread 

 to millions of people, and when the 

 United States extends her acreage to its 

 maximum and develops the yield to its 

 limit, nations yet unborn can rise up and 

 secure bread from her flour bins. 



Russia's wheat fields 



But as full of possibilities as the wheat- 

 growing industry of the United States 

 may be, they are few in comparison with 



