754 The Future of Agricultural Competition, 
Plate countries, he adds, are the only great tracts in which even 
the first three of these conditions prevail. In making this 
statement he allows too little and too much ; for there are other 
parts of South America and tracts of land in Central Africa in 
which his first three conditions prevail, while it is too much to 
say that the climate in La Plata or great portions of Australasia 
is favourable to grain-gi-owiug, which is precarious without irri- 
gation. In Manitoba and the North-west of Canada there are 
climatic disadvantages of a different kind, though scarcely as 
formidable as drought in Australia and the Eiver Plate, with 
rust and locusts added. Bat some of his conditions are wanting 
in every undeveloped country. 
In the United States, on the other hand, nearly everything 
would give way to wheat at a dollar a bushel (say S3s. a quarter) 
as the average farm price, or the equivalent of about 36s. a 
quarter at Chicago, or 39s. to 40s. at New York. At present 
freights this would be equivalent to fully 46s. for American 
wheat in Liverpool, a price which would be contemporaneous 
with an English average of about 40s. in a year of fair quality 
and condition for our wheat. The wasteful system of rearing 
cattle on ranges will soon disappear if grain sells well enough 
to afford a living profit to producers ; and, as live stock come 
to be concentrated on less ground, improved farming will 
necessarily take place in order to feed them, and they, in their 
turn, will increase the fertility of the soil. That America, before 
very long, will cease to be a great and regular food-exporting 
country is pi'obable ; but there is no reason to expect that it 
will become a food-importing country in the near future. The 
average yield of wheat in the United States, which was only 
11-8 bushels an acre for the ten years ending with 1890, and 
only about 12-3 bushels for the like period ending with 1891, 
might be doubled under favourable conditions, but only with 
wheat at such a price that American competition would cease 
to be formidable to growers in this countiy. The fair deduction 
from ^Ir. Davis's statements is that the days of extremely cheap 
agricultural production are drawing to an end, and that the 
advantages Avhich new countries have held over old ones are 
growing less and less. 
Other sources of considerable wheat supply outside Europe 
are not likely to increase their exports at a lower price than 
America will increase her supply. It has already been shown 
that the wheat area of nearly all of them has been diminished 
of late, and it is a fair assumption that their production wiU not 
keep pace with population under conditions less satisfactory 
than will be necessary in the United States. In India, all 
