The Corn Acreage

Reports from the department of agriculture show the acreage of corn, as compared with the area of last year, to be 95.6 per cent. The reduction of area has mainly been confined to the great corn producing regions of the Ohio, upper Mississippi and Missouri valleys. In these districts the falling off is much heavier than the general average above given, the loss here having been in a measvire offset by an increasing acreage in the Atlantic states, and in the south districts, in which corn is not a prominent erop. In the seven surplus states which furnish the bulk of commercial corn the acreage this year as compared with last year 's area is as f olio ws: Ohio, 90; Indiana, 84; Illinois, 84; Iowa, 87; Missouri, 86; Kansas, 99; Nebraska, 97; average, 89. This decrease has been in a measure offset by the increased acreage in the south, where a portion of last year's cotton belt bas been given to corn. In the eleven cotton states the present corn acreage, compared with that of last year, is 107.5. This rnakes a large increase in the aggregate area of that section, but it should be borne in mind that the yield per acre in the surplus states, where the acreage has been reduced, is much larger than in the south, where it is increased.