Cereal Farming

17

wheat belt. The methods used in the Canadian wheat lands, which
are the northward extension of those of the Dakotas, are of the same
progressive sort.
Where the region is rugged, as in the Appalachian Mountains,
wheat is raised only on the valley floors. Since the farms are small,
the farmer cannot afford expensive machinery, and therefore human
labor plays a large part in all farming operations.

CORN

It is difficult for one who does not live in the great corn region to
realize how important this cereal is to the United States. ‘ King
Corn” rules the land; he can bring prosperity or want. When
he smiles upon the farmers with abundant crops, prosperity spreads
far and wide. When he frowns with crop failures, business depression
 often follows and poverty knocks at many a door.
Our greatest crop. In a good corn year the United States raises
more than three billion bushels. This amount would give thirty bushels
to every man, woman, and child in the United States. What becomes
of the thirty bushels? No matter how much a person may relish
freshly cooked sweet corn, or corn that is canned, popped, or hulled,

UNITED ST
CORN PRN"

ICH DOT REPRESE!
200,000 BUSHELS

Fig. 31. Corn, or maize, was the only grain that Europeans found under cultivation in North
America. The Six Nations had cornfields which they cultivated year after year. There are about
7,000,000 farms in this country, and some corn is grown on most of them. But corn growing
on a large scale is not so widespread as wheat growing (Fig. 28). (Corn demands a season of
clear, warm sunshine and warm nights, with frequent light rains during the growing season. In
the Corn Belt, which stretches across western Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and eastern Nebraska, corn
growers find the right conditions of soil, sunshine, and rainfall. Corn is our most valuable crop.