MILLIONS MADE IN FARMING

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 234, 11 February 1911, Page 9

MILLIONS MADE IN FARMING

STUPENDOUS HARVEST. New York, December IS. The stupendous agricultural wealth of the United States and the great prosperity of the American farmers are indicated in a manner never before realised by Americans, as presented in the annual report of the Secretary of Agriculture, James AVilson.

American farm crops last year were worth £1,7«2,200,0Uu. This is three times as much as the net earnings of all the railways in the country, more than twice as much as the total deposits in the American savings banks, and more than five times the total of merchandise exported from the United States. The corn crop, the largest agricultural asset of the nation, is valued at £300,000,000, a sum more than sufficient to cancel the interest-bearing debt of the United States and buy all the gold mines in all the countries of the world last year.

The value of the farm products is twice as great as it was eleven years ago. Secretary Wilson credits this growth to the spread of intensive farming and the injection of business methods in the cultivation of the soil. More land is being tilled now, the report points out, than ever before in the history of the United States, and the average crop yield per acre has increased measurably.

"The nution may now begin to derive increasing confidence in its agriculture," writes Secretary Wilson, "because improvements are permeating the whole country. Production per acrs is beginning to overtake increase of people. The evidence is very plain that the yields per acre of our crops are now increasing, and if the facts were assembled in detail for the States, it would be found that the percentage of increase in yield in many of them is greater than the percentage of normal increase of population. "We cannot look for any other result than that the yields per acre of all our crops shall increase at an even faster rate in the future, in view of the intense interest with which our people are turning their attention to agricultural improvement. If tkere are certain forces at work, which, if unchecked and made more prevalent, will in the future compel us to big against the world for food, the counteracting forces have nevertheless been set in motion, with the promise of increasing effect. "It is now clear that the pioneer methods of agriculture are inadequate for the increasing needs of our growing population. There is also abundant evidence that, with a thorough knowledge of the soils and the intelligent application of modern intensive methods, the yields per acre of our crops can be increased many times."