The Probable Future Development of Grain Trade of the United States

Abstract

in a study of the food supply of Europe during war-years. The change wrought in sources of overseas supply rises strikingly above all other phenomena and centers in the expansion of food production in America and the clear deflection of ordinary ocean trade currents in the products of the farm. For example, there is in a study of crop production, marketing and movement, as influenced by the necessities of warring countries, a clear indication that price inducement is the governing factor most apparent in America's farm yields. Prior to the war there was a general acceptance that in America there were two distinct trends in grain production: 1. The elimination of our export grain surplus by the growing necessities of a home population. 2. The reduction in total grain yields by the replacement of diversified f rming. We are now able to see, by the actual response of American farms to the price inducement which war's higher levels created, that both the area of grain production and the yield per acre were possible of material enlargement. This trend is most clearly shown by a grouping of the years' production, for the purpose of ready comparison. istinct trends in grain pro-