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Show MARKETING liST : GREATEST PROBLEM WE ARE LONG ON PRODUCTION, 8HORT ON DISTRIBUTION. i By Peter Radford Lecturer National Farmers' Union. The economic distribution of farm products is today the world's greatest problem and the war, while it has brought its hardships, has clearly emphasized em-phasized the importance of distribution distribu-tion as a factor in American agriculture agricul-ture and promises to give the farmers farm-ers the co-operation of the government govern-ment and the business men the solution of their marketing problem. This result will, in a measure, compensate com-pensate us for our war losses, for the business Interests and government have been in the main assisting almost al-most exclusively on the production side of agriculture. While the depart ment of agriculture has been dumping tons of literature on the farmer telling him how to produce, the farmer has been dumping tons of products in the nation's garbage can for want of a market. The World Will Never Starve. At no time since Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden r , have the inhabitants of this world V suffered from lack of production, but " some people have gone hungry from the day of creation to this good hour for the lack of proper distribution. Slight variations in production have forced a change in diet and one locality local-ity has felt the pinch of want, while another Burfelted, but the world as a whole has ever been a land of plenty. We now have less than one-tenth of the tillable land of the earth"s surface under cultivation, and we not only have this surplus area to draw on but it is safe to estimate that in case of dire necessity one-half the earth's population could at the present time knock their living out of the trees of the forest, gather It from wild vines and draw It from streams. No one should become alarmed; the world will never starve. The consumer has always feared that the producer would not supply him and his fright has found expression expres-sion on the statute books of our states and nations and the farmer has been urged to produce recklessly and without with-out reference to a market, and regardless regard-less of the demands of the consumer. Back to the Soil. The city people have been urging each other to move back to the farm, but very few of them have moved. We welcome our city cousins back to the soil and this earth's surface contains con-tains 16,092,160,000 Idle acres of tillable till-able land where they can make a living by tickling the earth with a forked stick, but we do not need them so far as increasing production Is concerned; con-cerned; we now have all the producers we can use. The city man has very erroneous Ideas of agricultural conditions. condi-tions. The commonly accepted theory that we are short on production Is all wrong. Our annual increase In production pro-duction far exceeds that of our Increase In-crease in population. The World aa a Farm. Taking the world as one big farm, we find two billion acres of land in cultivation. Of this amount there is approximately 760,000.000 acres on the western and 1,260,000.000 acres on the eastern hemisphere, In cultivation. This estimate, of course, does not include in-clude grazing lands, forests, etc., where large quantities of meat are produced. The world's annual crop approximates approxi-mates fifteen billion bushels of cereals, ce-reals, thirteen billion pounds of fibre and sixty-five million tons of meat. - The average annual world crop for the past, five years, compared with the previous five years, is as follows: Past Half Previous Half Crops Decade. Decade. Corn (Bu.) 3,934,174,000 3,403,655,000 WheatfBu.) 3,522,769,000 3,257,526,000 Oats (Bu.) 4,120,017,000 3,508,315.000 Cotton(Bales) 19,863,800 17,541,200 The world shows an average Increase In-crease In cereal production of 13 per cent during the past decade, compared with the previous five years, while the world's population shows an increase of only three per cent. The gain in production far exceeds that of our increase in population, and It is safe to estimate that the farmer can easily increase production 25 per cent If a remunerative market can be found Tor the products. In textile fibres the world shows an increase during the past half decade In production produc-tion of 15 per cent against a population popula-tion Increase of three per cent. The people of this nation should address themselves to the subject of Improved facilities for distribution. Over production and crop mortgage force the farmers Into ruinous competition com-petition with each other. The remedy lies in organization and in co-operation In marketing. |