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to crowd out wheat and the Corn Belt to spread at the expense of the Wheat Belt. This is limited, however, by the fact that wheat will grow in drier and, especially, in colder land than corn. There is much good wheat land that will scarcely grow corn at all. Such land will, of course, continue to grow wheat or some other drought-resisting or cold-resisting crop.

The yield of an acre of beans under conditions or fair cultivation is equal in food value to 1.29 times that of wheat, whereas under conditions of fair cultivation an acre of potatoes yields 2.06 times the food value of an acre of wheat, and the sweet potato, on land and under a climate suitable for its cultivation, yields 4.82 times the food value of an acre of wheat. It is obvious, therefore, that when the arid regions which now supply wheat to the densely populated areas of the world fail to be adequate, much more food can be secured from the humid regions and much more life supported if the people will consent to consume a little less of the light-yielding and a little more of the heavy-yielding crops.

Beef, like wheat, is an economical form of food so long as an adequate supply can be secured from what would otherwise be waste land. In other words, so long as there are arid regions unsuitable for anything but pasturage, and so long as these dry pastures can supply us with an adequate quantity of beef, it will be economical to continue consuming beef as a standard article of diet; but when beef from this source proves inadequate, it will be very expensive to consume beef grown on land which would yield vastly more food if devoted to other crops. In fact, an acre of good corn land devoted to pasturage and beef-growing yields less than one tenth as much food value as the same acre would if devoted to growing corn.

Turning to heavy-yielding crops. If people would change their habits of consumption and consume products which could be economically produced under intensive methods, or products which are capable of yielding large quantities of food per acre, much land could be saved; in other words, a much larger population could be supported from a given area.

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The following table shows the estimated power of an acre of land under good cultivation-but not the most intensive cultivation-to produce food of different kinds:

FOOD VALUE
PER POUND

RATIO TO WHEAT AS BASIS. (PER CENT)

100

POUNDS PER

ACRE (GOOD

CALORIES
PER ACRE

YIELD)

1,800

2,988,000

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Of course there are elements of food value other than the heat-producing elements, but this table is enough to indicate that some economy of land could be effected by consuming other and more heavy-yielding crops than wheat and beef. Even these economies of land, however, might be gained by a less economical use of labor. While wheat and beef require considerable areas of land for their most economical production, they can be produced with comparatively small quantities of labor where the conditions are right. On our Western wheat farms, for example, where powerful machinery can be used, a small number of men can grow and harvest a very large acreage of wheat. On our Western cattle ranges also a small number of men can care for large numbers of cattle pasturing over very wide areas. If we did not have land enough for these purposes and had to support a growing population from our own soil, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, beans, milk, and milk products in the form of butter and cheese would support many more people than could be supported on wheat and beef. We

1 From Bulletin 28, United States Department of Agriculture, Office of Experiment Stations. Government Printing Office, 1896.

must bear in mind also that vast areas comprising more than half the land surface of the globe are too dry for anything but grazing. Their only possible food product is and will continue to be meat. Considerable quantities of reindeer meat can also, it is now believed, be grown in the far-northern regions of America, Europe, and Asia.

The banana and the date. Certain tropical countries have great advantages in the way of food production on small areas. Concerning the banana Humboldt wrote: "I doubt if there exists another plant on the globe, which, on a small space of ground, can produce so considerable a mass of nourishment.

.. The product of bananas is to that of wheat as 133:1, to that of potatoes as 44:1." In Arabia and northern Africa the date is very prolific and in favorable locations produces large quantities of food.1

Turning to the indoor industries. It is not likely to be repeated too often that the favorite method of economizing land and supporting a large population is to give up trying to be physically self-supporting and try to become commercially selfsupporting. By being physically self-supporting is meant producing from our own soil all or practically all that we need. By becoming commercially self-supporting is meant bringing in the products of the soil from other countries, selling to those countries in return the products of the mines and the indoor industries. The products of the indoor industries may themselves be made from imported raw materials. In this case we bring in raw materials, work them up into finished products, and sell them again to outside people, living ourselves upon the profits of the transaction. We virtually sell our labor to other nations.

This method of building up a great population has such vast possibilities, provided we are so situated as to be able to do it, as to appeal powerfully to the imagination of statesmen and nation-builders. If outside markets fail, then we must turn to

1 Cf. Buckle, History of Civilization in England, chap. xi. London, 1857-1861.

the development of our own soil, for in that case we must become physically self-supporting.

The pent-up versus the expanding type of civilization. Even though we aim to become physically self-supporting we have two distinct lines of development open to us: one is to develop an oriental, or pent-up, type of civilization; the other is to develop an occidental, or expanding, type of civilization. By an oriental, or pent-up, type of civilization is meant one in which we try to live on our existing area of land and to support a growing population without adding to our productive area. This leads to a gradually increasing intensity of cultivation and a gradual lowering of the standard of living of those who work on the soil, and eventually of the masses of the people. By an occidental, or expanding, type of civilization is meant one in which the effort is made to maintain the standard of living and the product per man in a growing population by widening our cultivated area rather than by cultivating the original area more intensively. If we had been developing a pent-up civilization we should never have spread, say, outside of the original thirteen states, but should have tried to support our increasing numbers by cultivating the soil more and more intensively. Indeed, we should probably not have left Europe in the first place, unless it had been to escape persecution. We have preferred to expand over more land rather than to try to live on the original area, whatever that original area might have been. It is difficult to see where this tendency will lead us, but it is a rather striking fact that from the Greeks down to the nations of the present every great European nation has been a colonizing nation. Thus people have preferred to go where land was abundant rather than to stay where population was dense. Unless we change our habit very decidedly we shall try to maintain our standard of living. When this cannot be achieved by intensive cultivation we shall swarm or send out colonists; that is, some people will emigrate. The only alternative would be the maintenance of a stationary population through birth control.

The table on the following page shows, roughly, the area of land which it takes to produce, under fairly good agriculture, the food of a soldier for a year.

This does not take into consideration the land necessary to clothe him or to feed the horses which are used to cultivate the land. If we assume that an average family of five persons will consume as much as do three soldiers, we shall conclude that it takes nine acres to produce food for a family. Besides, the land must grow feed for the horse that plows and cultivates it. According to the United States Census, in the great farming area of the upper Mississippi Valley there is one farm horse for every thirteen acres under cultivation. If, to be fairly liberal, one horse is sufficient to cultivate on the average fourteen acres, we might conclude that one horse could furnish the power necessary to cultivate enough land to grow the food for one family (nine acres) and for himself besides (five acres), or a total of fourteen.

The yields assumed in the table on page 255 are not unusually large, being about the same as those in England and other well-cultivated countries; but they are about twice the average yields in this and other new countries.

One very important part of the problem of economizing land is that of preserving and improving its present fertility. This is to be done mainly by careful management of the soil. Crop rotation, a proper balance between plant-growing and animal husbandry in order to supply natural manure, and an increased use of chemical fertilizers are the main parts of a policy of soil conservation. How important an item natural manure is in our national economy may be shown by the following facts: It has been conservatively estimated1 that the value of the animal manure of the country exceeds two billion dollars ($2,225,700,000). This is greater than the combined value of all the mineral output and the entire timber cut of the country at the time the estimate was made. If one third of this is wasted, it amounts to a sum much greater than the value of the

1 Farmers' Bulletin 192, p. 5, United States Department of Agriculture.

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