The World's Production and Consumption of Food. 139 
“ It is equally significant that the United States has contributed 
such a very large proportion, too, of all recent additions to the world’s 
food-producing areas, the extent and proportions of such contribu- 
tions being made clear in the subjoined table, where is shown the 
aggregate of all such additions, the number of acres contributed by 
the United States, and the percentage of the whole so contributed : — 
Tear 
World’s area 
in food staples 
Total acres added 
to area in 
food staples 
Acres 
contributed by 
TTnited 
States 
Percentage 
contribxjted by 
United 
States 
1870 . . . 
492,467,000 



1880 . . . 
654,031,000 
61,664,000 
.52,189,000 
84-7 
1890 . . . 
593,047,000 
39,016,000 
29,945,000 
77-0 
20 yrs. increase 
— 
100,580,000 
82,134,000 
81-7 
“This and the preceding tables show that during the last twenty 
years the consuming population has increased one- third faster than 
the products to be consumed, but this disproportionate increase has 
all occurred in the ninth decade (and the greater part of it within 
the last five years), as in the eighth decade the increase in acreage 
was 12‘5 per cent, as against an increase in population of 11 '4 per 
cent., while in the ninth the proportions have been an increase of 
14 per cent, in the consuming element and but 7 per cent, in the 
area devoted to all food staples. 
“Of the 100,580,000 acres added to the world’s food-producing 
area, it is shown in the last table that no less than 82,000,000, or 
nearly 82 per cent., must be credited to the United States, and dur- 
ing the fifteen years ending with 1885 our additions were quite 
equal to the entire added requirements of the world. Since 1885, 
however, our additions to the area in staple crops have been less than 
half that required to meet the increasing needs of our own popula- 
tion, hence we have found it necessary to draw the needed supplies 
from the acreage heretofore employed in producing food for exporta- 
tion, and the 21,000,000 acres so employed in 1885 have now been 
reduced, by augmenting domestic needs, to 10,000,000, and as we 
shall, at no remote day, require the entire product of our fields, we 
may well ask when will such conditions obtain, how will the world 
then fare for food, and whence can Europe hope to di’aw the needed 
supplies ? ” 
The most significant feature in the table last quoted is the marked 
falling- off in the addition which the United States has contributed 
to the increasing acreage devoted to raising bread-stuffs, viz. : from 
52,189,000 acres in 1871-80 to 29,945,000 in 1881-90 ; and this 
falling-off was not made good by a corresponding increase in other 
countries, such increase being only some 9,000,000 acres. This 
serious check on the extension of cultivated area in the United 
States is reflected in the advance in the value of good land in that 
vast country which has taken place in the last two years, an advance 
amounting, according to another authority whom I have con- 
