Excerpt from A Compendium of the World’s Food Production and Consumption: The Railway, the Market Wrecker
From the foregoing tables it appears that while population has, by peace and an abundant supply of the cheapest food ever known, been stimulated to such an increase the area devoted to staple food crops has. Of late, ceased to expand in like proportion and the acreage, relatively to population, has shrunken to less than that of the earlier years Of the eighth decade, when the bread-making grains bore a price 85 per cent. Higher than that obtaining in 1890.
At the close of the eighth decade the per capita quota of land in wheat was 443 of an acre, but at the close of the ninth decade the bread-eaters had so increased that the acreage of wheat, upon which each unit Of the population could draw, had diminished to 398 of an acre, being seven per cent. Less than the 427 of an acre quota of 1870, when the price was 85 per cent. Higher. The reasons for this abnormal condition of the supply, as related to the exceptionally low prices prevailing from 1884 to 1890 inclusive, are to be found in that the world’s wheat acreage (as measured by the area per capita in cultivation during the earlier years of the eighth decade when prices were such as to indicate that the supply was neither over-abundant nor deficient) was excessive in 1880 by some 000 and had been excessive for some years prior thereto and so continued up to about the middle of the ninth decade, such excess gradually disappearing - as population in creased without a proportionate increase in wheat acreage - and consumption overtaking current production, such production has since been deficient with the exception of years when, as in 1887, the yield has been much above the average.
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