HOW THE WORLD IS FED 



79 



Tunis, France, Spain, Greece, and Asia 

 Minor still give important contributions 

 to the world's crop. 



The olive tree has been imported to 

 America, and has thrived well in our 

 southern Pacific regions. There are trees 

 in California which were planted before 

 we signed our Declaration of Independ- 

 ence, and they are still bearing well. Cali- 

 fornia's contribution to the world's olive 

 crop is about 56,000,000 pounds a year. 



In southern Europe there is a saying 

 that the man who plants olive trees lays 

 up riches for his grandchildren, and 

 many of the people claim that olive trees 

 often live a thousand years. 



The trees are planted from cuttings, 

 sprouts, or the gnarled wooden bulbs at 

 the base of the trunk. They are set about 

 40 feet apart and begin to bear at two or 

 three years of age, although it requires 

 seven years for them to become commer- 

 cially profitable. They do not reach their 

 maximum bearing qualities until about 

 thirty years old. A ten-year-old tree may 

 have six or seven gallons of olives on it, 

 while one thirty years old may produce 

 as many as fifty gallons. 



In southern Europe and in other lands 

 around the Mediterranean Sea, olive oil 

 to a large extent takes the place of butter. 

 It is used not only in salads, but upon 

 bread and for cooking vegetables. In 

 some localities ripe olives and green oil 

 take the place of both bread and meat. 

 Many a Spaniard, when upon a long jour- 

 ney, ties a wicker basket of olives to his 

 saddlehorn and eats his meals as he 

 travels. 



California's preeminence 



The systematic growing of nuts is a 

 comparatively new industry in the United 

 States, yet it is one that promises to de- 

 velop into an important source of food 

 in the future. At the last census there 

 were five million nut trees in bearing in 

 the United States and more than three 

 million more approaching a bearing age. 

 They produced a total of 62,000,000 

 pounds of nuts, having a value of nearly 

 five million dollars — approximately a dol- 

 lar a tree. 



English walnuts took the lead in weight 

 produced, giving nearly one-third of the 



total weight and one-half of the total 

 value. The pecan led in the number of 

 trees, with nearly one-third of the total 

 in bearing and more than one-half of the 

 total too young to bear; but they con- 

 tributed only one-sixth of the total pro- 

 duction in weight and one-fifth in value. 



California's supremacy as a grower of 

 the newer crops is shown all along the 

 line. Out of 6,793,000 pounds of al- 

 monds grown in the entire country, that 

 State grows 6,692,000 pounds ; out of 

 4,150,000 bushels of apricots, it shows a 

 production of 4,066,000 bushels ; out of 

 35,000,000 pounds of figs for the entire 

 country, 23,000,000 belong to her credit ; 

 out of the country's total of 2,571,000,000 

 pounds of grapes, California is credited 

 with 1,979,000,000 pounds. 



Practically all of the country's lemons 

 come to us from that State, as does 

 nearly half of the total nut production; 

 nearly all of the country's 16,405,000- 

 pound olive crop ; more than two-thirds 

 of the total crop of oranges, amounting 

 to 19,405,000 boxes ; a fourth of the 

 peaches and nectarines, and 9,317,000 

 bushels of plums and prunes out of 

 the country's total yield of 15,480,000 

 bushels. 



SUNELOWER-SEED Oil, 



In Russia the people have found the 

 seeds of sunflowers a substitute for 

 olives in the making of oil. The native 

 Russian eats sunflower seeds as we eat 

 peanuts, keeping a handful or so in his 

 pocket and nibbling away at them from 

 time to time. Each sunflower has from 

 eight hundred to one thousand seeds and 

 about forty million pounds of them are 

 raised every year. 



An acre of sunflowers yields about 

 sixty bushels of seeds, and these, when 

 pressed, produce about fifty gallons of 

 oil. The Russians use sunflower-seed oil 

 almost exactly as we use cotton-seed oil 

 only they make a greater use of it as a 

 substitute for olive oil than we do. Much 

 of the oil is used for lighting and making 

 candles and soaps. 



The date is largely an around-the- 

 Mediterranean crop. It is grown by irri- 

 gation in the oases of the Sahara Desert, 

 in the valley of the Nile, in the fertile 



