| OCR Text |
Show MUCH FOOD GOES TO WASTE. By Pests, Such as Hostile Insects and Plants, Farmers Annually Lose $700,000,000. One way to provide new food is to save what we have. An apple or a grain of corn saveri is an apple or a grain of corn gained. Upon all the growing products of the earth an incessant in-cessant war is waged by hostile insects in-sects and plants. Some of these pests are animal flies, mites, caterpillars, etc. others, like rusts, mildew, bunt, smut and mold are low forms of plant life. But whatever their nature, origin or method of work, the total destruction destruc-tion wrought by these pests amounts in the United States to no less than $700,000,000 annually, says Success. Now, $700,000,000 may not be a large sum, though it compares measurably meas-urably with our total annual expenditures expendi-tures and is more than six times all the interest annually paid on all mortgages mort-gages on all the $20,000,000,000 worth of farms in the United States. But, if we could save these $700,000,000, we should increase our total income from farms ,by almost a fifth, and we could easily increase the population fed by some 10,000,000 or 20,000,000. We have already begun in this way to save a good many millions. We have drawn upon chemistry, we have invented sprays and washes, fumiga-tors fumiga-tors and insecticides and have used them with varying success. Sometimes Some-times we fail. There was once a contest con-test between the people of Massachusetts Massachu-setts and a caterpillar, and after expending ex-pending $8,000,000 and infinite patience, pa-tience, the people gave in and the caterpillar won out. |
