COSTS AND FARM PRACTICES IN PRODUCING POTATOES. 5 
PRODUCTION AND PRICE TRENDS. 
The production of potatoes has more than kept pace with the 
population. 2 The average annual production per capita from 1869 
to 1895 was 3 bushels and from 1S9G to 1921 it was 3.5 bushels. This 
is significant. The increasing demand is being met by production 
in this country. Our imports of potatoes are relatively unimportant. 
The largest imports for any one year occurred in 1911, when the 
imports exceeded the exports by 12,500,000 bushels, amounting to 
about 4 per cent of the total number of bushels consumed. In 
short crop years the imports usually vary from 1 to 2 per cent of 
domestic production. 
The lines of secular trend in Figure 3 indicate that total production 
has increased more rapidly than acreage and that both have increased 
more rapidly than population. The average yield per acre has been 
increasing as well as the production per capita. 
The variation in production of potatoes from year to year has 
been marked, as indicated in Figures 2 and 3. Yields per acre have 
fluctuated more widely than acreages and production tends to follow 
yields more closely than acreage. An increase of 25 per cent in yield 
per acre over that of the previous year has not been uncommon, 
while a 10 per cent increase in acreage has been unusual. 
The average yields for the United States seem to fluctuate in a 
series of cycles requiring two or three years for the completion of 
each cvcle. The first cycle in Figure 2, for instance, is from 1896 to 
1899, from the first high point to the succeeding high point in the 
yield-per-acre curve. The next cycle also required three years, the 
following high point not being reached until 1902. The range from 
the high to the low points of the cycles varies, but the regularity 
with which they occur is of more than passing interest. The striking 
thing is that the production varies consistently with the yield per 
acre and practically as widely. The acreage varies from year to year, 
but not as markedly as the yield per acre. In 75 per cent of the 
variations the yield moves in the same direction as the acreage, 
indicating that the factors which induce increase in acreage also 
influence the grower to work for a better yield. 
The yields per acre in individual States (fig. 2) do not always move 
in the same direction as the United States yields. In 1919, for 
instance, when the United States }~ield was 93 per cent of the 10-year 
average, the Maine yield was 121 per cent, and in 1917, when the 
United States yield was 104 per cent, the Maine yield was 68 per cent. 
Similar variations may be noted in other States. 
The farm price 3 per bushel varies inversely with the total produc- 
tion (see fig. 4) with few exceptions. The big variation in produc- 
tion for different years has been pointed out. When the production 
is relatively high the average price is relatively low and vice versa. 
It is the total production of the country that determines the price and 
not the production of any one State. Years of high potato prices 
2 The relations that have existed in the past between population, potato production, acreage, yields per 
acre, and price per bushelare shown in Figures 2, 3, and 4. A logarithmic scale was used in Figures 2 and 4, 
so that equal proportional changes are represented by equal vertical distances on the chart. An arithmetic 
scale was used in Figure 3, and the straight lines represent the long-time (secular) trend of potato produc- 
tion and acreage. 
3 The farm price is the Dec. 1 price as published by the United States Department of Agriculture. 
