Carolina watchman. [volume] (Salisbury, N.C.) 1871-1937, 1933-06-09
Weather Not
Chief Factor
Statistics Reveal Surprising Facts
About Loag-Range Farm
Production

control over total agricultural pro-
duction than do weather and other
uncomfortable natural factors.
The farmer is not in business for
one season only. He plans his o?er-
atoms for several seasons and con-
trolls his output by the amount of
his acreage. Variations in yield per
acre, due to weather often upset
his plans from one season to the
next, but in the long run, changes
in acreage and improvements in
cultural methods have more effect
on total output than do bumper
crops or crop shortages.
Statistics gathered BY the Unit
ed States Department of Agricul-
ture demonstrate this fact, al
though farmers and others are in
clined to remember high yields in
good seasons more easily than the
slower and more general changes
over a period Of years. 1t is not
always remembered, either, that
the smaller output in years of low
production has frequently turn
ed more money to the farmers
than have the bumper crops when
prices were lower.
Farmers in the United States
grew 926, 10000 bushels of wheat
in 1923, as compared with S74,-
$4,000 bushels in 1927. Yet they
received nearly s13o,0o0,00 0 more
for the smaller crop than for the
larger crop. American cotton
growers produced l~2,955,ooo bales
in 1927 as against 1870 0 bal
es in 1926. For the smaller crop,
the farm value as of December l.,
1927, was s1,269,S85,O0o or
s2S7,l49,OOO more than the farm
value of the larger crop grown the
year before. Potato productions
totaled 426,776,o0o bushels in!
1923 and was worth, on the Dec
ember l basis, s224,S59,0O0 The
1929 crop was only 329,134,O00I
bushels, but it brought $423,S96,-
900, Or S199,037,0O0 more than
the larger crop of the preceding
year.
Acreage is one of the obviously
comfortable factors in total agri-
cultural output. Scientific methods
of cultivation and fertilization,
and use of improved varieties are
Others. Increase or decreases in
production that are due to natural
and uncomfortable factors, cancel
each other in the long run. Mans
control of acreage and of cultural
methods is cumulative and con-
slant. Eventually, therefore, farm
ers themselves control production
by controlling acreage and acre
yields.
United States production of 10
important crops increased 146 per
cent between the two 5-year per-
iods lS85-1SS9 and 1900-19O4.
The acreage of these crops increas-
ed 1874 per cent, whereas the COM
bined a~cre-yield average rose only
4 per cent. Obviously the gain in
acreage, a comfortable factor, had
far more to do with the increase in
production than did the rise, in
yields.
In the first IS years of present
century, the output Of the 1o|
crops gained about % per cent,
almost wholly as a result of a "a
per cent increase in the acreage.
Again, yields per acre increased
only 4 per cent.
On a large acreage of any CROP,
yields per acre vary less than these
on a small acreage. In the last To-
years, for example, the yield per-
acre of wheat throughout the
world has averaged 1879 bushels.
In the highest of these 10 years
the average yield rose only to IS
bushels per acre and in the lowest
year it dropped only to 1873 bush
els. The production of a widely
distributed crop over a term Of
years depends almost entirely upon
the acreage of the crop.
The United States Department
of Agriculture points out that
nature decides the volume of pro-
duction only ON a short-time basis,
Nature largely influenced the big
drop in cotton production between
1926 and 1927, but man dictated
the big jump in cotton production
in the Swear postwar period
1919-1926, largely by increasing
the cotton acreage from 1885,
900 acres in 1919 to 47,O87,00O
acres in 1926. The cotton output
rose from 11,421,O0O bales in 1919
to nearly 100000 bales in 1926,
and more than two-thirds of the