Climatic Relations of American Barley Production

HE primary patterns of American barley production reveal an intimate relationship between the ecologic requirements of the grain and certain clearly marked climatic elements. Although barley is cultivated in an amazingly wide range of environments throughout the world, a circumstance in large measure made possible through the diverse adaptabilities of the many varietal forms of the plant, this grain is profoundly sensitive to meteorological influences. So far as climate is concerned, the areas in which barley can be profitably grown in the United States are more limited than those available to corn, wheat, or oats.' Of outstanding importance is the inability of barley to withstand the simultaneous occurrence of high temperature and high humidity, though, other environmental factors being suitable, it may thrive under conditions characterized by either element alone. At just what point these two factors attain a combined proportion prohibitive to the profitable culture of barley has not been defined geographically, though even if such a temperaturehumidity ratio could be established, it would still be impossible to draw definite limits on the map: additional climatic, biotic, varietal, and cultural factors, all intimately related, shift too much, in character and position, from year to year. Transitional border zones, however, marked by a constantly fluctuating acreage, betray the general position of the lines of climatic resistance

Agroforestry · Economics · Geography · Production (economics · Environmental Science · Horticultural and Viticultural Research