AMERICAN FARMING AND FOOD PRICES.

Hokitika Guardian, 23 February 1925, Page 4

AMERICAN FARMING AND FOOD PRICES.

WHY AYE MUST INCREASE OUR PRODUCTION.

(Harold Cox in the Daily Mail)

Among the many problems which the Royal Commission on Food Prices which is now at work will have to investigate is the question of the prospective output of foodstuffs in the great agricultural areas of the world. Unless the world can count on an increased production of food there is little likelihood of any appreciable fall in the prices wo have to pay. So far as the United States is concerned this subject is carefully examined iu a most illuminating paper on “Land Utilisation in tlio I oiled States,” by Mr 0. E. Barker, of the United States Department of Agriculture. The conclusions indicated will ' come with an unpleasant shock to many i British people who have been in the | habit of assuming that America's power of food production is almost iucxhaust- | i|,lo. Air Baker, on the contrary, holds I that the United States has already j reached what may perhaps host ho called the turning-point. To quote his I words: “The United Stales is atlain--1 ing maturity. A\*e have extended the I area of our cultivated lands as far as economic conditions justify.” Flo goes on to point out that, there are still about three hundred million acres of land that could by various means of amelioration he brought into use for crops. But these means of amelioration cost money, and the American farmer is not going to spend money on improving the land unless he can see a prospect of obtaining for his crop a price which will compensate him for his outlay.

U.S. PRICES .MUST RISE. Already, when prices fall, there i; a set-back to production. Three years ago, when travelling in the United vStates, 1 learned on the host authority that iii the Middle West, the farmers who grew maize were using their crops for fuel, because they found ihaf it paid them better to burn the maize than to sell it and buy coal. This was possibly only a passing incident. More serious is the fact noted by .Mr Baker that in several of the Eastern States cultivation is declining. “Til New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Alaryland, and Virginia there has occurred undoubtedly a real and notable decrease in the extent of the

arable area.” Yet while cultivation is thus being reduced, in many wide areas population is rapidly increasing. Air Baker estimates tiiat in the next twenty-live years the population of the United States'will have increased by ill least forty millions. 11 those additional millions are all to ha fed off American soil there must he a great increase in agricultural production. There is. he argues, enough land still available for reclamation, hut he expresses doubt whether it will be reclaimed. “It certainly will not unless the prices*)! agricultural products are much higher than at present.” THE ASIATIC PROBLEM.

There is. however, a possible r'lciua

live. In tropical and sub-tropical countries there is still to ha found a vast area of potentiality arable land ttia.l could he cultivated very cheaply with coloured labour. It is therefore possible that as the American population grows the. United States will cease altogether to he an exporter of food m.d avi 11 become ;ui importer. Hut at the same time there is a possibilitv of another world change taking place. At present Asiatic races are comparatively small consumers of the foods which Europeans and Amor! Mm regard as necessary. }or example, the •Japanese consumption of meat is esth mated at -III), per head, as against 17011). a head in the United States. If the Eastern standard should appreciably improve there "ill he a further complication in this world problem. Tie moral of the story is that v.e shall do wisely to concentrate our attention on the question of how host to increase food production, both at homo and in the overseas Dominions. Unless production is increased, prices will certainly rise in spite of any number of Royal Commissions.