American World Policies

by Walter E. Weyl

The hypothesis is far-fetched, but exactly the same result would follow if instead of our agricultural product dwindling, it remained constant while our population grew. If our population increased 100 per cent. and our agricultural product remained stationary or increased only twenty or forty per cent., it would be impossible to maintain our present relation to the world. We must uphold a certain, not quite constant relation between our agricultural (and other extractive) industries and our population if we are to keep out of the thickest of the European complications.

A secure basis for a policy of non-aggression lies therefore in the development of home agriculture.[[3]] It is not, however, to be expected that the proportion of farm workers will remain constant. In the United States this proportion has steadily fallen. Of every thousand males in all occupations 483 were engaged in agricultural pursuits in 1880 as compared with only 358 in 1910.[[4]] But despite this relative decline agriculture did not become less productive. More horses and more agricultural machinery were used, and fewer persons were able to perform the same amount of work.

What is more significant than the number of persons employed is the amount of land available for agriculture. Until 1900 we were in the extensive period of American farming, during which an increase in the population was met by an increased farm acreage. From 1850 to 1900 our population increased from 23 to 76 millions, but our farm area increased almost as fast and the improved farm area even faster.[[5]] During the decade ending 1910, however, a strong pressure of population upon American agriculture became obvious. In these ten years the country's population increased 21 per cent. while the total farm area increased only 4.8 per cent.[[6]] While 16,000,000 people were added to the population the increase in farm area was equal only to what would accommodate an additional three and a half million people. It is no longer easy to stretch the farm area and to a large extent our farms must grow by the increase of the improved at the expense of the unimproved acres.[[7]]

Actually the per capita agricultural production in 1909 (the year covered by the census of 1910) was less than that of a decade before. Though the crops in the latter year were far higher in value, the increase in the quantity of product was only 10 per cent., as compared with an increase in population of 21 per cent.[[8]] Had the American people consumed all the American product in both years, they would have been obliged to cut down their ration by about one-tenth;[[9]] instead there was a vast diminution of exports. The growing population began to consume the agricultural products formerly exported. The question is therefore pertinent whether it will be possible for us indefinitely to feed from our own fields our increasing millions or whether we shall be forced to depend increasingly for food on outside sources and to secure this food by a development of our export trade in manufactured products. To many this question will seem to answer itself. It is commonly assumed that there are almost no limits to our possible agricultural production and therefore to our desirable increase of population. France is almost self-sufficing with a population of 189.5 to the square mile; when the United States (continental area) has an equally dense population we may maintain a population of five or six hundred millions. We need merely take up new lands and cultivate more intensively.

The opportunities for the further development of American agriculture, however, while undoubtedly great, are not immeasurable. At present we have some 879,000,000 acres in farms, of which 478,000,000 (or 25.1 per cent. of our total land area) are improved.[[10]] But of the rest of our area much is not useful. Some 465,000,000 acres in the western part of the country have an annual precipitation of fifteen inches or less, and of these acres, not over 30,000,000 could be profitably irrigated at present prices of farm products, labour, land and capital. This addition of 30,000,000 acres would increase our present improved area by less than seven per cent. Besides the permanently arid acres, moreover, there is other unusable land in national forests, roads, cities and in swamps and over-flow lands difficult to reclaim. With these deductions made, we have only 1,252,000,000 acres as the maximum farm area of the future. This is 31.1 per cent. greater than the present farm area.[[11]]

It is true that a larger part of the farm area can be cultivated. From 1900 to 1910 the area of improved lands increased 15.4 per cent. If this rate of increase could continue there would be about one billion acres improved by 1960, and this seems to be the absolutely outside upper limit. But this does not mean that a billion acres could be improved and cultivated at the same cost per acre as at present. The improved lands would require a constantly increasing amount of capital and labour to secure returns equal to those which the farmer now obtains.

Similarly there are limits to the extent to which we can afford to divide up our land into smaller farms in order to secure a larger production per acre. Intensive cultivation is an alluring phrase but in the production of many staple crops intensive cultivation is dear cultivation. The movement in progressive agricultural communities is towards a moderately large farm. It is the smaller farms (of from 20 to 99 acres) that the boys and girls leave most rapidly. "The farm management studies," writes Mr. Eugene Merritt of the U. S. Department of Agriculture[[12]] "indicate that on these small-sized farms, man labour, horse labour, and agricultural machinery cannot be used efficiently. In other words, economic competition is eliminating the unprofitable sized farms."[[13]]

The pressure of agricultural population upon a given farm area results either in the growth of an inefficient small scale production or of a large rural proletariat. Both are undesirable and neither will permit farming on as cheap a scale as at present. The actual trend to-day in districts where cereals are raised is towards larger farms (of 150 to 300 acres), and this tendency is likely to be increased by the introduction of cheap tractor engines, which now seems to impend. There is doubtless a considerable opportunity in the United States for an improvement in the average product per acre even though the increase in the area of cultivation constantly brings in land of decreasing fertility. If in the course of forty or fifty years we can increase the area under cultivation by fifty per cent. and the product per acre by 20 per cent. we shall have an increase in product of 80 per cent., which would provide for an increase in the population of 80,000,000 without any greater leaning upon foreign resources than to-day.[[14]]

We are likely, however, to lean upon certain foreign resources, and more especially upon Canada and the Caribbean countries. Whatever its political allegiance Canada is and will probably remain economically a part of the United States. The Iowa farmers, who sold out their home farms to buy cheaper land in Canada, unconsciously illustrated the closeness of this economic bond. We may draw upon Canadian wheat, fish, lumber and iron ore almost exactly as though the territory were our own. It is Canada's interest to sell to us and buy from us, and even preferential duties cannot entirely overcome our immense geographical advantage over Europe. Similarly we shall draw upon the Caribbean countries, whether or not we have a political union, for vast quantities of tropical food stuffs.