EVERYONE knows of the great contributions to Old World agriculture which the Americas made at the time of the Discovery: maize, potatoes, tobacco, peanuts, tomatoes, pineapples, and many more. In return the New World received such things as sugar cane, wheat and barley, bananas, and oranges. The conquistadors, and especially the missionaries who accompanied them, were tireless in their efforts to establish the familiar crops of the homeland in the territories which they were colonizing, and at the same time were deeply interested in sending back to Europe the strange and remarkable products of the Indies.

Thus were sown the seeds of agricultural In honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Dr. L. S. Rowe as Director General of the Pan American Union, the BULLETIN is publishing a series of papers on interAmerican relations, 1920-1945, of which this is the seventh.

cooperation in the Americas; for it is through the exchange of useful plants that we are first able to help each other in this field.

Coming down to our own times, we have a notable example of the tremendous benefits which can derive from this sort of work in the laranja de umbigo, or navel orange, of Bahia, which in the year 1870 was sent to the United States from Brazil. It had originated there as a mutation and had been propagated by a Portuguese horticulturist. In less than half a century, this fruit became the basis of a great industry in California.

Then, about the year 1900, the exchange of useful plants assumed definite, organized form, through the development in the United States Department of Agriculture of an Office of Foreign Seed and Plant

Introduction. This was in the nature of a revival, for since the days of colonization relatively little had been done to move useful plants from one country to anotherexcept in isolated cases such as the establishment of American cinchona and rubber in the Asiatic tropics-and these projects. were unilateral in character.

The work organized in Washington under the able direction of David Fairchild was carried out by a corps of agricultural explorers whose instructions were "to ascertain in what way a mutually beneficial exchange of seeds and plants might be established, between the countries visited and the United States of America."

Courtesty of USDA

NAVEL ORANGE TREE AND
COMMEMORATIVE TABLET

This is one of the first two trees of the Washington navel orange planted in California. The tablet bears the inscription: "To honor Mrs. Eliza Tibbets and to commend her good work in planting at Riverside in 1873, the first Washington navel orange trees in California, native to Bahia, Brazil, proved the most valuable fruit introduction yet made by the United States Department of Agriculture. 1920."

Supervised by Dr. Fairchild himself for more than a quarter of a century, the activities of this office-now known as the Division of Foreign Plant Exploration and Introduction-have continued down to the present day. Through correspondence as well as through the travels of agricultural explorers, many thousands of plants have been distributed to Latin American countries, while other thousands have gone from there to the United States. Similar organizations have been established in several countries, notably in Argentina under the direction of Ing. Enrique C. Clos, and it is fair to assume that great benefits will continue to accrue in many ways, for as Dr. Fairchild has said in a recent letter to me from his home in Florida, "What diplomatic moves can compare, in effects of lasting character, with the introduction of a new plant that becomes an industry?"

Cooperation in recent times

It is the purpose of this paper to review, in a general way, the progress of agricultural cooperation in the Americas during the past quarter of a century. The recent celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Dr. L. S. Rowe's directorship of the Pan American Union has suggested this; and it seems especially appropriate since most of the great developments have taken place during this period. By way of introduction, I have sketched above what forms, in my mind, the background; for I am convinced that it was through the exchange of useful plants that all of us first came to think of agricultural cooperation. Following this exchange came succeeding stages: the need for information, for experimentation, for better methods of pest control; and in these and many other lines it has become increasingly evident that all of us can cooperate to our mutual advantage.