than the farmers of some other nations. Production per acre,
however, is not the American standard. The standard is the amount
of production for each person engaged in agriculture, and by this
test the American farmer appears to be from two to six times as
efficient as most of his competitors.

WASTEFULNESS OF EARLY FARMING

As long as we had a great abundance of unoccupied land it would
perhaps have been uneconomic to increase the production of that
which was occupied by the costly methods of agriculture used in
Belgium, Germany, and other thickly settled countries. But the old
methods of farming not only failed to get from the soil all that
it was then capable of producing, they also robbed it of fertility
without restoring to it what was taken from it. Thus the loss
caused by wasteful methods was passed on to future generations. To
continue such methods in the light of our present knowledge and
with our growing population is thriftless in the extreme. Methods
of preserving and restoring the fertility of the soil and of
obtaining the largest returns from it are now receiving the most
careful attention from both state and national governments.

IDLE LANDS

A great deal of land lies idle that might be productive of food--
not only arid, swamp, and cut-over lands, mentioned in later
paragraphs, and land held for speculation, but also vacant lots
and unused back yards in cities and villages, and waste or unused
portions of cultivated farms. It is largely from city and village
lots that the School Garden Army obtained its remarkable results.