2 BULLETIN 1234, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
"When the United States Department of Agriculture began its 
survey of the agriculture of the world it undertook to determine, as 
far as possible, the changes in agriculture, the changes in the char- 
acter and amount of the competition which our farmers must meet, 
and the changes in the nature and quantity of the demand for our 
agricultural products that have taken place and are still taking 
place throughout Europe and the world's other great centers of 
production and consumption. Many countries that have not under- 
gone changes of boundaries have been affected by the changed eco- 
nomic status in which the world now finds itself; while those countries 
that have been affected by a shifting of frontiers consequent upon 
the breaking up of the Central Powers and Russia have had many 
complexities added to an already aggravated situation. 
The production of certain commodities has been increased in the 
effort of a consuming nation to become self-supporting or of the 
producers of certain regions to meet unusual markets; while the 
production of certain other commodities has been restricted on ac- 
count of changes in land tenure and for many other reasons, that 
are numerous and varied and which will be taken up in detail as they 
affect the production or consumption, the supply or demand of each 
country considered. 
The problem of meeting the demand of the world for food and raw 
materials is primarily the problem of supplying the needs of a few 
great cities and industrial centers, although no sharp line of dis- 
tinction can be drawn. So far as this is true within each country 
that absorbs our products the surplus producing districts are com- 
peting with our farmers to obtain a profitable outlet for their own 
products just as surely as the surplus producing nations which send 
their rival cargoes over sea and land. We must know every phase 
of foreign agricultural conditions which will enlighten us with regard 
to the nature and extent of both kinds of competition. We must 
be able to gauge the market conditions and requirements of the 
great consuming centers more accurately than we have done in the 
past. 
The following report of the agricultural situation in the Upper 
Danube Basin is the first of the series of reports on the agriculture 
of those regions of the world that compete with our agricultural 
products in the foreign field and of those regions that look to us as 
a source of their supplies of foodstuffs and raw materials to be used 
in their industrial development. 
In taking up this general subject in each country the plan has 
been to show what is the present agricultural situation with reference 
to those commodities that are of vital concern to our farmers as 
contrasted with the agriculture of the same territory during the 
period immediately- preceding the World War. This has required, 
in several cases, a recalculation of pre-war statistics to adjust the 
data published by former governments to present-day boundaries. 
THE DANUBE STATES DEFINED. 
The Danube River, flowing through one of the world's most im- 
portant grain-surplus producing regions, has been made a great 
international waterway since the World War. This waterway 
