Agricultural Prosperity

The final estimate of the farm value of American crops as of Dec. 1, made by the Department of Agriculture, places the figure for 1923 at $8,322,695,000. This represents an increase of $800,000,000 over the crops of last year, and is about $2,000,000,000 more than crop values in 1921. It is obvious that the farmer is finding his way out of the great agricultural depression.

Farmers' receipts from corn, oats, barley, buckwheat, flaxseed, potatoes, hay (tame and wild), tobacco, cotton and cottonseed, sugar beets, maple sugar, sorghum, peanuts, beans, onions, cabbage, hops, apples and oranges were all in excess of the crop values of last year. The current year, however, provided less crops than 1922 in wheat, rye, rice, clover seed, grain sorghums, broom corn, cranberries, peaches and pears.

The most profitable crop to farmers was corn, which at the high price of 72.7-c- a bushel was worth $2,222,013,000, as against the 65.8-c- crop of 1922, worth $1,919,775,000. Wheat proved the most unprofitable crop: at the price of 104.7-c- on Dec. 1, 1923, the current winter wheat crop was worth about $543,825,000, and at 92.3-c- for spring wheat that part of the crop was valued at $181,676,000-- both were worth $725,501,000--which is $147,911,000 less than for 1922, and even $29,333,000 less than in 1921.