CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 
It is generally recognized that agriculture and agricultural resources 
are subject to numerous hazards. Losses occur throughout the production, 
marketing, and processing of plants, animals, and their products. 
Diseases and insects reduce the yield of crops, forest trees, and live- 
stock. Crop response is also adversely affected by hail and weeds. Im- 
proper land utilization is known to result in enormous deterioration of 
soils. 
Losses in agriculture are of two types = (1) reduction in quantity or 
deterioration in quality during the production, handling, and processing 
of farm and forest products, and (2) deterioretion in land on farms and 
forests, affecting annual production immediately in some cases, and over 
a period of years in the future. 
This report provides information concerning the extent of these losses. 
Losses in the Nation's kitchen are also included to complete the picture 
of what happens to agricultural products from the soil to human consump—- 
tion. The report does not include losses in production and productive 
efficiency due to failure to use recommended management practices, such 
as the use of farm land for less productive crops than others that might 
have been chosen. 
The Department previously has made estimates of some of the hazards to 
which agriculture is subjected. However, never before have comprehensive 
estimates been assembled in one document. The last fairly complete 
summary of the losses caused by insects was issved by the Bureau of 
Entomology and Plant Quarantine in 1938. The economic consequences of 
animal diseases, parasites, and insects were tabulated in the Yearbook of 
Agriculture for 1912. These were followed by a brief resume of insect 
depredations in the Yearbook for 1952, The Yearbook for 1953 covered the 
effect of plant diseases in general. 
The potentialities for obtaining additional and more efficient farm 
production over the next or 5 years from improved methods and the use of 
additional fertilizer, lime, machinery, and other resources and at the 
same time maintaining and improving the productivity of our land resources 
were evaluated recently in a nationwide study by the U. S. Department of 
Agriculture in cooperation with the land-grant colleges.1 / The losses 
described in the present report do not duplicate the field covered in 
that study. 
ay) Land Grant College - Department of Agriculture Joint Committee on 
Agricultural Productive Capacity. Agriculture's Capacity to Produce - 
Possibilities Under Specified Conditions. U.S. Dept. Agr., Inf. 
Bul. 88, June 1952. 
