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Show Hi WORLD'S GREATEST PROBLEM 1 WE ARE LONG ON PRODUCTION, SHORT ON DISTRIBUTION. 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 It - h;:r-; -'.ips, 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-opera! Ion of the goern-ment goern-ment and tho 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 hare been In the main assisting almost al-most exclusively on the production side of agriculture While the department depart-ment of agriculture has been dumping tons of literature on the farmer telling him hew to produce, the farmer has been dumping tons of products in the nation's garbage can for v. ant of a market. The World Will Never Starve. At no time sinco Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden have the inhabitants of this world 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, flight variations in production have forced a chance in diet and one locality local-ity has felt the pinch of want, while another surfeitpd, but the world as a whole has ever l"cn 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 earths population could at tho present time knock their living out of the trees of the forest, gather it from wild vines and draw it from streams. No on 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 ben 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 moe 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, lfin.ooo idle acres of tillable till-able land where they can make a living by tickJing the earth with a forked stick, but we do not need them so far as increasing production is concerned; con-cerned; wo 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 wo 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 as a Farm. Taking the world as one big farm, we find two billion acres of land In cultivation. Of this amount there is approximately 750,000,000 acres on the western and 1 .20,000,000 acres on tho 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 prst five years, compared with the previous five years, is as follows: Past Half Previous Half Crops Decade Decade. Corn (Bu) 3,93-4,174.000 3,403,055.000 WheatfBu.) 3,522.769.000 3,257,520,000 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 for 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. |