Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-04-21
A Gro,O;ng Dearth of That IN
Which Georgia Abounds

nent economist Of the federal department
of agriculture, touching the pace at which this
country's population is crowding upon its re-
serve of productive SOIL. We are wont to
think still in terms of pioneer America, of a
nation
With shadowy forests and with champains
rich'd,
With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted
meads,
that will never know exhaustion, at least not
within times calculably near enough to give
us of today serious concern. But, says Dr..
Baker, writing in the Geographical Review,
our agricultural development now has reached
the stage when there is practically no more
potential agricultural land left unutilized that
does not involve Improbable expense for
reclamation or clearing" Add that our
population, which during the nineteenth cen
tury increased from five million to seventy
six million, is now multiplying at the rate
of million and half year, and plainly
the problem is more than academic.
How can the supply of products from an
available farmland area that grows ever
less in proportion to population be made to
meet future needs? Heretofore the means of
increasing the supply have been, for the most
improvements in agricultural methods. To
these there must be added, thinks DR.. Baker,
at least five others; greater intensity of cul-
tivation, diminution Of waste, reduction of
exports, increase of imports, and "a gradual
shifting from a diet in which meat figures
prominently to one largely confined to the
cereals, veetables. and dairy products" Most
Of these factors are already manifest-par-
ticularly intensive cultivation, and efforts to
diminish waste, by means Of more efficient
marketing.
By bringing agriculture to that degree of
productiveness which appears attainable by
full application of scientific truth this country,
it Is calculated, should be able to feed and
| clOCn6 from 1LS dVdl1dDle 1dnQ resources d
maximum of approximately four hundred
million inhabitants. Should our. population
during the last decade, this maximum would
be reached within century or less. 1t
should be observed moreover, that the rate
for 191O-192O during which befell the World
War, with it's four-year stoppage of immigra-
ton to America, and also a ravaging cpl
demic of influenza) was considerably smaller
than for the decades preceding. The increase
for $4,000 was only fifteen per cent, whereas
that from 18901910 was twenty per cent;
that from 1880 to 1890 twenty-five Eer cent;
that from 1870 to 1880, thirty per cent; and
that from the Revolutionary War to the War
Between the States, about thrty-five per
cent for each intervening decade. Special
students OF the subject are led to believe
however, that our population in the oncoming
years will increase even less rapidly than
during the period of 1s10192O so that by
200 A. D. (when our now four-months-old
babies will be celebrating their seventy-sev-
enth birthday the country will number
somewhere between one hundred and seventy
five and one hundred and eighty-f1ve million
inhabitants. That will leave rather a COM
Portable margin this side of the four hun
dred million maximum. We need| not yet
fall to weeping over our famine-bitten pos
terity.
The fact stands nevertheless, that we now
have reached a definitely assignable limit to
our arabic land; wherefore agricultural eff
cheney will become more and more needful to
health and prosperity and even to subsistence
itself. Obviously, too, those regions which
have a considerable reserve of land for crops
and animal husbandry will become increas
ingIy important This is of much significance
to Georgia, whose area, well-nigh as large as
that of England and Wales, is not yet even
half developed as regards it's agricultural
resources. In swamp and wet lands Alone the
state has upwards of seven million seven hun
dred thousand acres, most of which, in time
can be profitably reclaimed for farming, and
much of which already abundantly warrants
drainage and cultivation. The enhancement
of Georgia land values during the last twenty
five years, remarkable as it has been, prob