WHEAT PRODUCTION IN AMERICA Wheat was introduced to the infant English colonies in Vir ginia and Massachusetts soon after their settlement in 2607 and 1620, respectively. It had been introduced to Mexico by the Span ish, however, probably as early as 1530. Strangely enough, how ever, it was not wheat but maize, or Indian corn, that became the staple meal of these English colonists in America, and more than once saved them from starvation.
There were good reasons for the superiority of corn over wheat on the Atlantic coast. The soil and climate were better suited to it. Maize was much easier to plant, cultivate, and harvest in the rough clearings, among stumps and stones. Maize was more easily ground and cooked with primitive kitchen utensils.
Wheat production developed commercially with the westward progress of settlement to better wheat soils and climates, with the increasing of towns and cities, and with improved facilities for handling the crop in field and mill. The first American wheat belt stretched from Delaware and Maryland to central New York. This district still grows much wheat. The States of the Ohio val ley were the next centre of commercial wheat production. They are to-day a centre for the production of the soft red winter wheats. The opening of canals in the Potomac valley and New York enabled the movement of this wheat to the more populous eastern seaboard, and the building of railroads greatly speeded and extended the process.
The most rapid expansion of American wheat production took place immediately after the Civil War, and occupied the period from 1866 to about 1890. It was due to three principal factors.
First, the development of large-scale harvesting and threshing machinery, which had been the goal of inventors for years prior to the war. Secondly, the advance of settlement from the rolling forested lands of the East to the relatively level open prairies and plains of the great West, with their better wheat soils, and suit ability to machine operations. Thirdly, the release of a large body of adventurous young spirits from the armies, with a desire for the strenuous life of the new frontiers.
Wheat was the dominant crop in this new inland empire. Fa vourable soil and climate, level open fields, and large machinery units made production profitable on low-priced land, much of it homesteaded. Wheat was a concentrated crop, readily storable under frontier conditions, and haulable by team for relatively long distances in summer or winter. Being a staple food crop, it always was readily saleable.
Distinct wheat-growing areas have developed, based on differ ences in the kinds of wheat grown, or in the methods of growing them. Most of the country grows winter wheat, but two classes of spring wheat are grown near the northern boundary. The five great commercial classes of wheat in America are: (2) Soft red winter, (2) hard red winter, (3) hard red spring (common), (4) durum, and (5) white wheat, which consists of both win ter and spring wheats, both club and 'common, but all having white kernels.
The soft red winter wheats occupy the humid eastern United States from the Atlantic Ocean westward to about the line of 30 inch rainfall, which runs from eastern Texas to north-western Iowa, and thence eastward to the Great Lakes. They are used primarily for making pastry flours, and for blending with the stronger hard wheats in the manufacture of bread flour.
The hard red winter wheats occupy the southern two-thirds of the Great Plains area, and also eastern Montana and some dry land areas in Idaho and Oregon. These wheats are used directly for making bread flour for domestic use and for export as wheat or flour, or for blending with soft wheats for both domestic and export purposes.
The hard red spring wheats predominate in Minnesota, the Dakotas, eastern Montana, and far northward into Canada, where an isolated production district is found in the Peace River valley at about latitude 56° N. They are used alone or for blending with the winter wheats in the making of bread flours and command pre mium prices when protein content is high.