1940 - Agriculture

Agriculture

The United States exports some 3 million tons of wheat under the export subsidy program started in 1938. The subsidy averages 27.4¢ per bushel to equalize the higher U.S. price with the world price.

Argentina ships wheat and other foodstuffs to Europe. She will become the richest nation in South America in the next 5 years.

Berlin orders wholesale slaughter of Danish livestock to boost German morale with extra "victory rations" and to save on fodder, gambling that the war will be short. Cattle numbers are reduced by 10 percent, hogs by 30 percent, poultry by 60 percent, and by next year Danish output of animal products will fall to 40 percent below 1939 levels.

Soviet authorities arrest geneticist Nikolai Vavilov and imprison him in an underground cell for his opposition to T. D. Lysenko, who will dominate Soviet agriculture until 1964 with his unscientific ideas (see 1936; 1942).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recognizes Santa Gertrudis cattle as a new breed. Developed over the last 18 years by King Ranch boss Robert J. Kleberg Jr., 44, the cattle have the cherry red coloring and beef quality of the English shorthorn first imported in 1834. The genetic stock of the new breed is five-eighths shorthorn, but the animals have the small hump, the heavy forequarters, and the hardiness of the Indian Brahma breed introduced in 1854. Steers reach a weight of 2,300 pounds and give up to 71.9 percent meat (see 1885). The younger Kleberg has made an arrangement with Humble Oil to receive royalties on oil and gas pumped from King Ranch lands that now cover nearly a million acres, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island. The ranch is the largest single beef-cattle producer in America.

An Agricultural Testament by British agronomist Sir Albert Howard, 67, favors use of natural fertilizers. Sir Albert was knighted upon his return to Britain after nearly 30 years in India, where his experience led him to subscribe to Mohandas K. Gandhi's statement that "the poor of the world cannot be helped by mass production, only by production by the masses." Farmers in the state of Indore have learned early Chinese techniques of intensive agriculture and water management; having seen them use locally produced vegetable and animal manure for lack of more efficient fertilizers, Howard says that nations rich in labor but poor in capital must use their natural strengths rather than follow Western models and that man must cooperate with nature rather than try to conquer natural forces (see Rodale, 1942).

The U.S. soybean crop reaches 78 million bushels, up from 5 million in 1924 (see 1945). Soybean refiner A. E. Staley dies at Miami, Fla., December 26 at age 73.

The United States has more than 6 million farms, but while 100,000 farms have 1,000 acres or more, some 2.2 million have fewer than 50 acres (see 1959). Farmers have withdrawn from cultivation nearly one-third of the farmland tilled in 1930—some 160 million acres—under programs instituted by the Soil Conservation Administration (see 1935).