HOW THE WORLD IS FED 



65 



pounds to export annually, while Austria- 

 Hungary has a surplus of 4,000,000 

 pounds. In normal times England takes 

 three-fifths of the world's surplus of 

 butter; in 1912, out of 728,000,000 

 . pounds moving in international com- 

 merce, the United Kingdom took 435,- 

 000,000 pounds. 



There are no world statistics of the 

 production of cheese, except of that part 

 moving in international trade. The 

 United States annually produces about 

 four pounds per capita. The total amount 

 imported by all the countries of the world 

 is 531,000,000 pounds, of which the 

 United Kingdom takes 250,000.000, Ger- 

 many 47,000,000, and Austria-Hungary 

 13,000,000 pounds. Bulgaria exports 

 7,500,000 pounds, and Holland and Swit- 

 zerland have 190,000,000 pounds to give 

 a cheese-hungry world. 



VEGETABLES AND ERUITS 



The Department of Agriculture esti- 

 mates that one-fourth of our country's 

 diet consists of vegetables — products of 

 the truck garden. If this is true of the 

 United States, which, next to Australia, 

 is the world's largest per capita meat- 

 eater, it is more true of other countries. 

 Our census returns show that we pro- 

 duce, exclusive of potatoes and sweet po- 

 tatoes, vegetables to a value of $216,- 

 000,000. 



The tomato takes first rank, with a 

 $14,000,000 production to its credit; the 

 onion contributes exactly one-half as 

 much to the total as the tomato, while 

 sweet corn makes a successful bid for 

 third place ; watermelons get fourth place, 

 with a production valued at $5,000,000, 

 and cantaloupes add $4,000,000 more to 

 the total. Green beans and green peas 

 are $3,000,000 crops. These figures deal 

 almost entirely with the production that 

 gets to the city market and not with the 

 vegetables raised for consumption on the 

 farm (see pages 4 and 107). 



THE KITCHEN GARDEN 



There is probably no farm-house in all 

 the land so poor as to be without its vege- 

 table garden and its truck patch, and be- 

 tween the dried beans, corn, peas, etc., 



and the canned cucumbers, beets, to- 

 matoes, ketchup, and what not, the rural 

 housewife takes her family into the win- 

 ter with the assurance that, high cost of 

 living or no high cost of living, there will 

 be no dearth of vegetables on her table. 



If the products of the vegetable garden 

 figure extensively in the world's diet, they 

 play no greater role than the products of 

 the orchard, vineyard, and berry patch. 

 The total yield of the latter, according to 

 the last census, is worth $222,000,000 a 

 year. 



Orchard fruits are produced to an an- 

 nual value of $140,000,000. We produce 

 a bushel and a half of apples per capita, 

 a third of a bushel of peaches, two quarts 

 and a half of strawberries, and other 

 things in proportion. Grape-vines and 

 citrous trees each yield $22,000,000 worth 

 of fruit a year, while our berry crop is 

 valued at $29,000,000 ( see page 73 ) . 



While most of our fruits and vege- 

 tables come to us in their natural state or 

 canned, the country annually produces 

 millions of dollars' worth of dried fruits — 

 a production which figures more largelv 

 in other parts of the world than in our 

 own. 



THE ART OE CANNING 



It is only a little more than a century 

 since the fruit-jar came into use. Before 

 that the only way of keeping the fruits 

 and vegetables that are now canned was 

 to dry them or put them away in sugar 

 or salt. The invention of the modern 

 process of canning is credited to Nicholas 

 Appert, a Frenchman. His method was 

 to put the food to be preserved in glass 

 jars, set them in boiling water, and, when 

 the contents were thoroughly heated, seal 

 the jar (see also page 1). 



Although Napoleon gave Appert twelve 

 thousand francs for his work, he simplv 

 had built on foundations well laid by 

 Spallanzani nearly a half century before. 

 The apparatus used by Appert in his can- 

 ning processes was very crude, but his 

 discoveries laid the foundation for one of 

 the important industries of modern times, 

 and have proved a boon to the urban pop- 

 ulation of the earth. 



While Napoleon Bonaparte paid for 

 the discovery of the canning process, his 



