The St. Johns herald., 1901-11-23
MEXICO THIRD IN CORN.
Its Yield of the Cereal Exceeded OnI,
 by United States and Austria.


 by United States and Austria.
 Mexico ranks third among the corn growing nations of the world, its total crop being exceeded only by that of the
 United States and of Austria Hungary, says the Crop Reporter, issued by the United States Department of Agricul- ture. From one point of view, the Mex lcan crop is of even more importance than that of any cOrn-raising country on the globe. In 1898 1t amounted to III, ,347, 900 bushels and it presented the remarkable feature of being a little over twelve times larger than the wheat crop of that country for the same year, says the Texas Stock Jour nal. Mexico is of more relative import anec as compared with it's wheat crop to the agriculture of Mexico than is the corn crop of the United States. Our own corn crop in 1898 was only about threefOld the production of wheat and this ratio Is seldom greatly exceeded. The climate and soil of Mexico below the twenty-eighth degree of north lat itude are doubtless as favorable to the production of corn as those of any country in the world. Below that de- gree of latitude the four seasons merge into two, the rainy and the dry; and the comparatively heavy produc- tion of corn there, in spite of the most primitive methods of farming, is large ly due to the fact that in many places two successive crops can be raised on the same soil in the course of the year. The yield is prodigious and is given by some authorities as multiplying from POO to 400 fold.
 The states of principal production are generally those that border upon or lie | near the coast, either on the Pacific or Pacific Coast, the first con-producing State of the republic, with total area l iD square miles somewhat larger than | the State of New York, produced in | 1898 a crop of 16,812,OO0 bushels. East | of, and contiguous to, Jalisco, the State of Guanajuato, with an area ! little larger than that of Ohio, produced , the second crop in importance, or 1O,- | 934, 900 bushels. Michoacan, a Pacific | Coast State Joining Jalisco on the | south, produced 5,02O,OOO bushels. On the opposite coast the State of Vera Cruz, extending in a narrow belt along the gulf, with an area little over half that of JaliscO, produced 12,266,OO6 1 bushels, the second crop in importance | in the republic. Other states of uni formly heavy production are Sinaloa, Hidalgo, Pueblo, Oaxaca, the State of | Mexico and Yucatan.
 The crop statistics of Mexico show that in that part of the country which lies between the twenty-eighth and the twenty-fifth degrees of north latitude the crop varies considerably in quan- tity from one year to another; this Is | suggestive of occasional climatic condi- | tions and lack of moisture unfavorable | to the culture of corn. But south of the | twenty-fifth parallel, especially near the coast, the production Is generally | uniform or, on an ascending scale, in- dicating climatic conditions for corn culture of an unusual degree of perfec- tion.
 One of the important. facts concern ing corn culture in Mexico is that from 1t is derived the staple article of food | among the Mexican people. Upon the tortilla, kind of corn cake, the mass of the people depend largely for subsist- ence.