1944 - Agriculture

Agriculture

A "Green Revolution" moves forward outside Mexico City as Iowa-born former E. I. du Pont plant pathologist (Ernest) Norman Borlaug, 30, joins the Rockefeller Foundation effort to improve Mexican agricultural production (see 1943; 1949; Salmon, 1945).

The average yield per acre in U.S. corn fields reaches 33.2 bushels, up from 22.8 in 1933 (see 1968).

U.S. soybean acreage reaches 12 million as new uses for the beans are found in livestock feed, sausage filler, breakfast foods, enamel, solvent, printing ink, plastics, insecticides, steel-hardening, and beer.

U.S. farm acreage will decline by 7.3 percent in the next 20 years, dropping by 1.3 million acres per year. Some 27 million acres of non-croplands will be converted to farm use (mostly in Florida, California, Washington, Montana, and Texas), but 53 million acres of croplands will go out of production and be used for home and factory sites, highways, and the like.

Britain cuts her food imports to half their prewar levels. Domestic wheat production has increased by 90 percent, potato by 87 percent, vegetable by 45, and sugar beet by 19 despite the manpower shortage. "Land Girls" and others have worked to achieve the agricultural production gains, and the Ministry of Food has economized on shipping space by importing dried eggs and milk, dehydrated vegetables, and boneless and compressed meat, recommending what foods may be produced at home and what deficiencies can best be met by imports. Far more cheese, dried milk, canned fish, and legumes such as peas, beans, and lentils are imported than before the war, while imports of nuts and fruits other than oranges have been sharply reduced.