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Rh cereals declined less during the thirty years. Corn declined from an average farm price of 42·6 cents per bushel for 1870–1880 to 34·4 cents in 1890–1899. The average production per acre shows nothing conclusive with regard to the fertility of the soil of the country. The expansion of the crop area usually causes a lowering of the average yield per acre by distributing the culture, fertilizers, &c., over more surface. Likewise the contraction of crop area will usually increase the average yield per acre of the entire country.

The average yield of wheat per acre was 12·4 bushels in the decade 1870–1880, and 13·1 in the period 1890–1899; of Indian corn, 27·1 in 1870–1880, and 24·1 in 1880–1899 continuously. Oats fell off from 28·4 in 1870–1880 to 26·2 bushels per acre in 1890–1899. The averages for the years 1900–1905 show an increase over the previous decade both in yields and (with the exception of the price of barley) in prices of all the cereals.

The agricultural returns for 1890–1905 may be taken as an illustration of the cereal production of the United States. The figures for wheat, oats and Indian corn are presented in Tables XXXIII., XXXIV. and XXXV.

The acreage and production of wheat have steadily increased. The acreage in Indian corn, the great American crop, reached its highest in 1902, 94,043,613 acres, and its production its highest figure in 1905, 2,707,993,540 bushels.

Producing as the United States does so much more than its people can consume, its exports form a large percentage of some of the crops, as Table XXXVI. shows.

Large portions of some of these crops, like Indian corn and oats, are exported in the form of animals and animal products (meats, lard, hides, &c.). The hay crop is almost entirely used in this way, and the tendency is to convert more and more of these crops into these higher-priced products. Still, the time is far distant when domestic consumption will come anywhere near overtaking domestic production, especially of wheat and the other cereals. The certain extension of acreage with the growth of demand and price, the increased use of agricultural implements, and the improvement of methods will be sure to keep up a large surplus for export for many years to come. The Department of Agriculture has found that for home use there were required per head 5·5 bushels of wheat, 28·6 bushels of Indian corn, and 10·7 bushels of oats, the computations being made from the figures for population, production and exports for 1888–1892; in 1905, 6·15 bushels of wheat and wheat-flour, 28·59 bushels of Indian corn and corn-meal. The following number of acres in these crops was required, therefore, to supply the home demand for 1888–1892:—0·43 of an acre in wheat, 1·15 acre in corn, and 0·43 acre in oats per head of the population. Taking the year