The average quantity of seed sown per acre is between four and five pecks, varying with the quality, the locality, method and time of seeding and the whim of the sower. The yield ranges from ten to sixty bushels per acre, the bushel weighing sixty pounds.
Wheat is mostly sown with drills, the old method of sowing broadcast having been mostly abandoned. By drilling a more even distribution and covering of the seed, and a better stand and yield of grain may be confidently expected.
In harvesting small areas the self-binding reaping machine is popular. This cuts the standing grain and binds it in sheaves of convenient size which are stood in shocks of three or four dozen bundles each, whence it is either threshed direct or put in stacks for threshing at a more convenient season. On larger areas and especially where the wheat is quite ripe, the header is commonly and widely used. This clips off the heads of grain, and elevates them into large receptacles called barges, set on wagons, leaving the straw standing. Usually when headed the grain is put directly into stacks, and threshed at convenience.
ECONOMIC PRODUCTS.--Its commercial varieties, hard, soft, red, white, etc., differ in percentage of starch and gluten.
The whole grain is ground into graham flour, made into breakfast foods and used in brewing.
From parts of the grain are prepared whole wheat flour, white flour, middlings, bran, wheat grits, wheat starch, macaroni, spaghetti, etc.
Wheatflour may be said to be the standard foodstuff of modern civilized man.
Macaroni is made from special varieties of hard, glutinous wheat.
Wheat straw is plaited into braids (Leghorn, etc.) for hat making, and is used like the straw from other grains for packing material and as bedding for animals.
Straw braids come largely from Italy, China and Japan.
The principal countries exporting wheat are United States, Russia, Argentina, Canada, Roumania, India and Australia.
Among the commercial products of the world, vegetables are a most important item, and their value as foodstuffs needs no emphasizing. The inhabitants of the world could subsist without animal-flesh, could scarcely subsist entirely on cereals, but they most certainly could not subsist without vegetables. Practically every nation, savage and civilized alike, cultivates a few plants for use as vegetables. The vegetables we know and prize most are one and all the result of long cultivation, the origin of most being lost in antiquity. The world has been ransacked, and for the vegetables cultivated in America nearly every country under the sun has been laid under contribution.