CROP ENTERPRISES Economic economic factors that determine the selection of crop enterprises are numerous, the most important being the value of the product per unit of weight taken together with the cost of transportation to market. A product worth less than about 1.5 cents a pound cannot be shipped to a distant market unless consumers in the distant market can pay a high price for it. Thus the oat crop thrives best in the western moun tain states. Yields are larger and the weight per bushel much greater there than elsewhere in the country; but the cost of transportation to the principal markets is very high ; consequently the oat crop in the mountain states is limited practically to local needs. The commercial oat crop is produced in much less favour able territory nearer the great market centres.
Another important economic factor is competition with other regions that can produce more cheaply. For example, previous to 189o, New England farmers were engaged largely in butter pro duction. They grow their roughage, but in general buy their concentrated feed from the West. About 1890 the northern states of the Middle West entered into butter production on a large scale and produced more cheaply than their New England com petitors. The result was a marked decrease in butter production and a large decrease in the area of land farmed in New England.
Market demand is, of course, always a factor in determining the crops to grow. There are only five crops grown in the United States for which there is a use or market demand for more than 10,000,000 acres of the product. These are cotton, corn, wheat, oats and hay, and each of them occupies more than 4o million acres of land. Together these five crops occupy 88% of the crop area. American farming is therefore based in the main on cotton, corn, wheat, oats and hay.
Transportation facilities are important economic factors, as dre also the supply and character of the available labour and the adaptability of the crop to machine production. The small grain crops, such as wheat, oats and barley, have benefited more by the introduction of machinery than any others, and they occupy a large place in the farming in those sections where the topography makes large machinery feasible. Very recently large scale ma chinery has been made available for the cultivation of cotton and corn, and this fact is partly responsible for a recent tendency toward an increase in the acreage of these crops.
Examination of the two columns headed "Fruits" and "Vege tables" in the chart shows that, with the exception of vegetables in New Jersey and fruits in California, several of the New England states have a larger proportion of their crop area in crops of this class than the other states of the Union. They are, in fact, pro ducing about all the fruits and vegetables for which they can find a market in the relatively short season available to them.
The above facts account for the. very large percentage of hay acreage in New England, in spite of the fact that the region is not as well adapted to the production of hay as the middle western and far western states. Even the production of hay could not be the basis of an extensive industry in New England were it not for the fact that the New England farmer has a very extensive market for fresh milk because of his nearness to many large cities. The cows that produce this milk require large amounts of hay.
In a similar manner the peculiarities of the agriculture of each of the remaining groups of states may be readily explained. The reader who desires to pursue the subject further will find full explanations in Farmers' Bulletin No. 1,289, issued by the United States Department of Agriculture.
A glance at the chart shows the crops that must, in the main, be the basis of farming in the various groups of states. The last column shows all crops not shown in the preceding columns and which occupy as much as 4% of the crop area of the various states.
In the case of fruits and vegetables a relatively small acreage produces under average conditions a large return ; their importance in American agriculture is considerably greater than is indicated by the chart. But the total acreage of these two classes of crops is only about 4% of the acreage of all crops in the United States. Yet the farming in many restricted areas is based almost wholly on fruits or vegetables.
Amongst the fruits, oranges are grown extensively in California and Florida, and in small areas in other states along the southern border. Lemons are confined mostly to California; peaches are grown extensively in central and southern latitudes ; pears, mainly in the Pacific Coast States, while prunes and cherries are important commercial fruit crops on the Pacific Coast.
The small fruits or berries, mainly strawberries, but with some blackberries and raspberries, are grown commercially in restricted areas widely scattered over the country, mostly in central and southern latitudes. The advantages of cooperative marketing are believed to account for the increasing concentration of acreage of the berries.
The commercial production of table vegetables is largely con centrated in areas of favourable soil near cities. Several locali ties in the southern states grow vegetables to supply northern cities in winter and early spring.
Lying to the north and northeast of the Corn Belt is a group of states in which dairying is the dominant industry, hay occupying a larger acreage than any other crop. In general, the dairy industry is well developed only in those sections of the country where it is the only generally available industry for the farmers.
In the far South lies the Cotton Belt, which extends from south ern Virginia southward and westward to California. The high prices of cotton which prevailed during the World War, and part of the time subsequently, have caused an enormous westward exten sion of the cotton area and an in!iportant extension northward. Many millions of acres of land are still available for cotton pro duction in the United States. The introduction of cotton on these acres awaits only a market demand sufficient to absorb the prod uct at a satisfactory price.
Lying between the Cotton Belt and the central Corn Belt is a group of states, extending from Maryland to Kentucky and Ten nessee, which may be called the South Central Corn Belt. Corn occupies a larger percentage of the crop acreage in this group of states than in any other. This is not because they are better adapted to corn than the Central Corn Belt states to the north of them ; it is rather due to the fact that for the most part they lie too far north for cotton, too far south for wheat and oats, and have rainfall sufficiently heavy to make the curing of hay a pre carious business. In this group of states the dairy industry has recently been advancing rapidly merely because of the absence of other satisfactory enterprises. As the demand for dairy products increases these states will probably become a more important fac tor in the dairy industry.
A fifth group of states lies in the Plains region to the east of the Rocky mountains. They are devoted largely to wheat produc tion and to the range industry, with cattle and sheep. Finally, we have the great group of far western states, consisting of the three Pacific Coast states and the nine Mountain states. In most of these wheat and hay, mainly alfalfa, are the dominant crops. These states are as yet, for the most part, sparsely settled, most of the land now cultivated being under irrigation, though there are exten sive tracts with sufficient rainfall to permit wheat production with out irrigation. There are possibilities of great extension of agri culture in this region, particularly with the further development of irrigation projects.
Market Milk.—This phase of the dairy industry is for the most part concentrated in the vicinity of cities and towns. It is a more profitable form of dairying than the production of factory milk. At the present time the dairy industry of the New England states is almost exclusively confined to the production of market milk. This phase of the industry is also found highly developed in con siderable areas about such cities as Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Seattle and Tacoma in the State of Washington ; Portland, Oregon ; and San Francisco and Los Angeles in California. Smaller developments are found in the vicinity of all cities.
Factory Milk.—Production of milk for sale to factories produc ing condensed milk, butter or cheese is the most extensive phase of the dairy industry in this country. The business is largely con centrated in the northernmost of the middle western states, where feed is cheap and where the winters are long and severe. As already explained, this form of dairying began in the last decades of the previous century to shift from the New England states to the Mid dle West. At present the industry is extending northwestward into the Northern Plains and Mountain States, and has long been im portant and increasing in the Pacific Coast States.
Raising Beef Calves.—About half the beef calves are raised on ranches in the West, the other half on farms in the Middle West, and to some extent all over the country. This is an extensive type of farming and produces low income from land devoted to it. In the Corn Belt, where many steers are fattened, farmers quite generally keep a few beef cows mainly to consume corn stalks, unsalable hay, or other waste products, and incidentally to raise calves for the fattening pens. On such farms the raising of beef calves is usually a minor enterprise. In the arid regions of the far West, where the grazing is sufficiently good for cattle, the raising of beef calves becomes a principal business.
Fattening Beef Cattle.—The fattening of beef cattle is mainly an industry of the region producing a surplus of corn. This means the Central Corn Belt. In the far West a considerable number of beef cattle are fattened on alfalfa hay alone, or in combination with grains, mostly barley and oats. In the Cotton Belt, a few cat tle are fattened on cottonseed meal, the hulls of the cottonseed being fed for roughage. The fattening of beef cattle is a somewhat speculative business because of the irregular changes in the price of cattle. When the price is rising the business may be quite profitable ; when it is falling heavy losses may ensue. When prices are steady, feeders usually count on the manure for their profit. An important advantage in feeding steers is that the manure is a valuable fertilizer.
Pork Production.—Swine are kept as scavengers in all parts of the country, but extensive pork production is confined mainly to the region of cheap fattening foods, especially in those parts of the Corn Belt states where the yield of corn is high. In recent years the acreage of corn and the number of hogs fattened have increased markedly in the northern Plains States. The industry may, in fact, be said to be moving in that direction.
Poultry.—Chickens are kept on farms everywhere, for the most part in flocks of 25 to 15o. These small flocks find most of their living about the barn lot and in the insect and weed seeds they can find about the farm. Until about 189o, these ordinary farm flocks produced a sufficient quantity of eggs to supply the needs of the urban population. But in the last decade of the century the growth of cities became so marked that the ordinary farm flocks no longer sufficed to supply the demand; then came the development of the commercial poultry farm. At the same time the great Middle Western portion of the country, where grains are cheap, increased the size of their poultry flocks. A continued increase in the de mand for poultry products has led to extensive development of commercial poultry farming on individual farms here and there in most of the states. The major development has been in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and on the Pacific Coast.
In recent years the introduction of culling has increased the prof itableness of the industry. The culling process consists in a care ful examination of the individual hens and the discarding of those evidently not good layers. When the process was first introduced it resulted in discarding about 4o% of the flocks culled, greatly to the advantage of the poultryman. The method of cross breeding for the double purpose of securing increased egg-laying ability and of distinguishing the sexes at hatching, originally suggested by Punnett, of England, and widely adopted amongst English poultry men, has been neglected in America. Its general adoption would still further increase the profitableness of the poultry industry. Sheep.—Shortly before the beginning of the World War the supply of wool had fallen below world demand, and prices had risen to the point of considerable profit. The sheep business has remained profitable in the United States since that time except that in 192o, when the financial depression became severe, woollen mills found themselves with enough imported wool on hand to supply the decreased demand for woollen clothing for nearly a year. In consequence, American wool became unsalable. But within a year the supply of imported wool had been consumed and the price of American wool went back to its pre-war level, where it has since remained.
Goats.—Goats are unimportant except in a few localities. In southwest Texas there is a considerable area where goats are run in large numbers on the ranges. They are of some importance on farms in western Oregon and on ranges in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. For the most part the range goats are Angoras. In the southern states, where livestock farming is little followed, the or dinary goat is quite widely kept in small numbers as a source of meat on farms. Since about i9oo several of the milk breeds of goats have received attention. They are becoming fairly common in the vicinity of cities as a source of supply of milk for infants and invalids. The most important development of this industry is in the Pacific Coast states, particularly California.