The estimates indicate not only preventable reductions in production, 
but also those that are not avoidable with present technical knowledge. 
Additional resources would be needed and additional costs incurred to 
reduce these losses. For example, additional labor, machinery, and 
materials would be required to put control measures into effect and also 
to complete the production process in. the case of losses that occur be- 
fore harvest or production otherwise is completed. This would also be 
true of the estimates of losses to land. 
The estimates evaluate the annual production and land resources lost 
at the prevailing average farm prices, This does not necessarily mean 
that the farmers’ cash income would have been increased to that extent 
if the losses had not been incurred. Increased supplies sometimes 
cause sufficient price decreases so that the total farm income from a 
large crop may be no greater than from a small one. The loss from the 
destruction of food supplies, however, is just as serious from the 
standpoint of the American public whether price changes result or not. 
The losses given must therefore be interpreted as losses to the general 
public rather than to the farmer, It would not be possible immediately 
to sell greatly increased quantities of products except at lower prices, 
but markets can be expected to expand considerably in the next 25 years 
with continued population growth accompanying general economic growth. 
The original computations were carried out to more significant places 
than are shown in the tables. This may explain occasional apparent 
slight discrepancies in the loss percentage and acreage equivalent 
figures as tabulated. 
Acreage Equivalents 
The acreage equivalents shown in the last right-hand columns of many 
of the tables in this paper indicate the number of acres that were re- 
quired to produce that part of the crop that was lost from the cause 
shown. Each such estimate takes into account conditions on each crop 
separately. It thus is based on the average returns from the crop on 
the class of land on which that crop was grown, and the potential pro- 
duction that would have occurred if that particular cause of loss had 
not been present. 
In the Summary (Chapter XIII) the losses from all causes, expressed 
in dollars as a convenient measure, are added together and an over=all 
acreage equivalent on an average loss basis is computed from the percent— 
age relationship that the estimated loss bears to the potential total 
agricultural production of the United States--the production that would 
have occurred if none of the causes of loss had been present in the 
production and distribution of any of the materials concerned. This 
method averages out all differences in returns-per-acre and losses-per- 
acre between different crops, and gives a lower acreage equivalent of 
loss than the sum of the individual items. That equivalent is a very 
conservative estimate of the total number of acres whose product is 
lost annually due to the causes discussed in this report. 
wot e 
