THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE.
The development of agriculture--Over-population prejudice--Can
the soil of Great Britain feed its inhabitants?--British
agriculture--Compared with agriculture in France; in Belgium; in
Denmark--Market-gardening; its achievements--Is it profitable to
grow wheat in Great Britain?--American agriculture: intensive
culture in the States.
The industrial and commercial history of the world during the last
fifty years has been a history of decentralisation of industry.
It was not a mere shifting of the centre of gravity of commerce,
such as Europe witnessed in the past, when the commercial hegemony
migrated from Italy to Spain, to Holland, and finally to Britain:
it had a much deeper meaning, as it excluded the very possibility
of commercial or industrial hegemony. It has shown the growth of
quite new conditions, and new conditions require new adaptations. To
endeavour to revive the past would be useless: a new departure must
be taken by civilised nations.
Of course, there will be plenty of voices to argue that the former
supremacy of the pioneers must be maintained at any price: all
pioneers are in the habit of saying so. It will be suggested that the
pioneers must attain such a superiority of technical knowledge and
organisation as to enable them to beat all their younger competitors;
that force must be resorted to if necessary. But force is reciprocal;
and if the god of war always sides with the strongest battalions,
those battalions are strongest which fight for new rights against
outgrown privileges. As to the honest longing for more technical
education--surely let us all have as much of it as possible: it
will be a boon for humanity; for humanity, of course--not for a
single nation, because knowledge cannot be cultivated for home use
only. Knowledge and invention, boldness of thought and enterprise,
conquests of genius and improvements of social organisation have
become international growths; and no kind of progress--intellectual,
industrial or social--can be kept within political boundaries;
it crosses the seas, it pierces the mountains; steppes are no
obstacle to it. Knowledge and inventive powers are now so thoroughly
international that if a simple newspaper paragraph announces
to-morrow that the problem of storing force, of printing without
inking, or of aerial navigation, has received a practical solution in
one country of the world, we may feel sure that within a few weeks
the same problem will be solved, almost in the same way, by several
inventors of different nationalities.[34] Continually we learn that
the same scientific discovery, or technical invention, has been made
within a few days’ distance, in countries a thousand miles apart; as
if there were a kind of atmosphere which favours the germination of a
given idea at a given moment. And such an atmosphere exists: steam,
print and the common stock of knowledge have created it.
Those who dream of monopolising technical genius are therefore
fifty years behind the times. The world--the wide, wide world--is
now the true domain of knowledge; and if each nation displays some
special capacities in some special branch, the various capacities of
different nations compensate one another, and the advantages which
could be derived from them would be only temporary. The fine British
workmanship in mechanical arts, the American boldness for gigantic
enterprise, the French systematic mind, and the German pedagogy, are
becoming international capacities. Sir William Armstrong, in his
works established in Italy and Japan, has already communicated to
Italians and Japanese those capacities for managing huge iron masses
which have been nurtured on the Tyne; the uproarious American spirit
of enterprise pervades the Old World; the French taste for harmony
becomes European taste; and German pedagogy--improved, I dare say--is
at home in Russia. So, instead of trying to keep life in the old
channels, it would be better to see what the new conditions are, what
duties they impose on our generation.
The characters of the new conditions are plain, and their
consequences are easy to understand. As the manufacturing nations of
West Europe are meeting with steadily growing difficulties in selling
their manufactured goods abroad, and getting food in exchange, they
will be compelled to grow their food at home; they will be bound to
rely on home customers for their manufactures, and on home producers
for their food. And the sooner they do so the better.
Two great objections stand, however, in the way against the general
acceptance of such conclusions. We have been taught, both by
economists and politicians, that the territories of the West European
States are so overcrowded with inhabitants that they cannot grow all
the food and raw produce which are necessary for the maintenance of
their steadily increasing populations. Therefore the necessity of
exporting manufactured goods and of importing food. And we are told,
moreover, that even if it were possible to grow in Western Europe all
the food necessary for its inhabitants, there would be no advantage
in doing so as long as the same food can be got cheaper from abroad.
Such are the present teachings and the ideas which are current in
society at large. And yet it is easy to prove that both are totally
erroneous: plenty of food could be grown on the territories of
Western Europe for much more than their present populations, and an
immense benefit would be derived from doing so. These are the two
points which I have now to discuss.
* * * * *
To begin by taking the most disadvantageous case: is it possible that
the soil of Great Britain, which at present yields food for one-third
only of its inhabitants, could provide all the necessary amount and
variety of food for 41,000,000 human beings when it covers only
56,000,000 acres all told--forests and rocks, marshes and peat-bogs,
cities, railways and fields--out of which only 33,000,000 acres are
considered as cultivable?[35] The current opinion is, that it by no
means can; and that opinion is so inveterate that we even see men
of science, who are generally cautious when dealing with current
opinions, endorse that opinion without even taking the trouble of
verifying it. It is accepted as an axiom. And yet, as soon as we try
to find out any argument in its favour, we discover that it has not
the slightest foundation, either in facts or in judgment based upon
well-known facts.
Let us take, for instance, J. B. Lawes’ estimates of crops which were
published every year in _The Times_. In his estimate of the year 1887
he made the remark that during the eight harvest years 1853-1860
“nearly three-fourths of the aggregate amount of wheat consumed
in the United Kingdom was of home growth, and little more than
one-fourth was derived from foreign sources”; but five-and-twenty
years later the figures were almost reversed--that is, “during the
eight years 1879-1886, little more than one-third has been provided
by home crops and nearly two-thirds by imports.” But neither the
increase of population by 8,000,000 nor the increase of consumption
of wheat by six-tenths of a bushel per head could account for the
change. In the years 1853-1860 the soil of Britain nourished one
inhabitant on every two acres cultivated: why did it require three
acres in order to nourish the same inhabitant in 1887? The answer is
plain: merely and simply because agriculture had fallen into neglect.
In fact, the area under wheat had been reduced since 1853-1860 by
full 1,590,000 acres, and therefore the average crop of the years
1883-1886 was below the average crop of 1853-1860 by more than
40,000,000 bushels; and this deficit alone represented the food of
more than 7,000,000 inhabitants. At the same time the area under
barley, oats, beans, and other spring crops had also been reduced by
a further 560,000 acres, which, alone, at the low average of thirty
bushels per acre, would have represented the cereals necessary to
complete the above, for the same 7,000,000 inhabitants. It can thus
be said that if the United Kingdom imported cereals for 17,000,000
inhabitants in 1887, instead of for 10,000,000 in 1860, it was simply
because more than 2,000,000 acres had gone out of cultivation.[36]
These facts are well known; but usually they are met with the remark
that the character of agriculture had been altered: that instead of
growing wheat, meat and milk were produced in this country. However,
the figures for 1887, compared with the figures for 1860, show that
the same downward movement took place under the heads of green crops
and the like. The area under potatoes was reduced by 280,000 acres;
under turnips by 180,000 acres; and although there was an increase
under the heads of mangold, carrots, etc., still the aggregate area
under all these crops was reduced by a further 330,000 acres. An
increase of area was found only for permanent pasture (2,800,000
acres) and grass under rotation (1,600,000 acres); but we should look
in vain for a corresponding increase of live stock. The increase of
live stock which took place during those twenty-seven years was not
sufficient to cover even the area reclaimed from waste land.[37]
Since the year 1887 affairs went, however, from worse to worse. If
we take Great Britain alone, we see that in 1885 the area under
all corn crops was 8,392,006 acres; that is very small, indeed, in
comparison to the area which could have been cultivated; but even
that little was further reduced to 7,400,227 acres in 1895. The
area under wheat was 2,478,318 acres in 1885 (as against 3,630,300
in 1874); but it dwindled away to 1,417,641 acres in 1895, while
the area under the other cereals increased by a trifle only--from
5,198,026 acres to 5,462,184--the total loss on all cereals being
nearly 1,000,000 _acres in ten years_! Another 5,000,000 people were
thus compelled to get their food from abroad.
Did the area under green crops increase correspondingly, as it would
have done if it were only the character of agriculture that had
changed? Not in the least! This area was further reduced by nearly
500,000 acres (3,521,602 in 1885, 3,225,762 in 1895, and 3,006,000
in 1909-1911). Or was the area under clover and grasses in rotation
increased in proportion to all these reductions? Alas no! It also was
reduced (4,654,173 acres in 1885, 4,729,801 in 1895, and 4,164,000
acres in 1909-1911). In short, taking all the land that is under
crops in rotation (17,201,490 acres in 1885, 16,166,950 acres in
1895, 14,795,570 only in 1905, and 14,682,550 in 1909-1911), we see
that within the last twenty-six years another 2,500,000 acres went
out of cultivation, without any compensation whatever. It went to
increase that already enormous area of more than 17,000,000 acres
(17,460,000 in 1909-1911)--_more than one-half of the cultivable
area_--which goes under the head of “permanent pasture,” and hardly
suffices to feed one cow on each three acres!
Need I say, after that, that quite to the contrary of what we are
told about the British agriculturists becoming “meat-makers” instead
of “wheat-growers,” no corresponding increase of live stock took
place during the last twenty-five years. Far from devoting the land
freed from cereals to “meat-making,” the country further reduced its
live stock in 1885-1895, and began to show a slight increase during
the last few years only. It had 6,597,964 head of horned cattle in
1885, 6,354,336 in 1895, and 7,057,520 in 1909-1911; 26,534,600 sheep
in 1885, 25,792,200 in 1895, and from 26,500,000 to 27,610,000 in
1909-1911. True, the number of horses increased; every butcher and
greengrocer runs now a horse “to take orders at the gents’ doors” (in
Sweden and Switzerland, by the way, they do it by telephone). But
if we take the numbers of horses used in agriculture, unbroken, and
kept for breeding, we find only small oscillations between 1,408,790
in 1885 and 1,553,000 in 1909. But numbers of horses are imported, as
also the oats and a considerable amount of the hay that is required
for feeding them.[38] And if the consumption of meat has really
increased in this country, it is due to cheap imported meat, not to
the meat that would be produced in these islands.[39]
In short, agriculture has not changed its direction, as we are
often told; it simply went down in all directions. Land is going
out of culture at a perilous rate, while the latest improvements
in market-gardening, fruit-growing and poultry-keeping are but a
mere trifle if we compare them with what has been done in the same
direction in France, Belgium and America.
It must be said that during the last few years there was a slight
improvement. The area under all corn crops was slightly increasing,
and it fluctuated about 7,000,000 acres, the increase being
especially notable for wheat (1,906,000 acres in 1911 as against
1,625,450 in 1907), while the areas under barley and oats were
slightly diminished. But with all that, the surface under corn
crops is still nearly _one-and-a-half million acres_ below what it
was in 1885, and nearly _two-and-a-half million acres_ below 1874.
This represents, let us remember it, the bread-food of _ten million
people_.
The cause of this general downward movement is self-evident. It is
the desertion, the abandonment of the land. Each crop requiring
human labour has had its area reduced; and almost one-half of the
agricultural labourers have been sent away since 1861 to reinforce
the ranks of the unemployed in the cities,[40] so that far from being
over-populated, the fields of Britain are _starved of human labour_,
as James Caird used to say. The British nation does not work on her
soil; _she is prevented from doing so_; and the would-be economists
complain that the soil will not nourish its inhabitants!
I once took a knapsack and went on foot out of London, through
Sussex. I had read Léonce de Lavergne’s work and expected to find
a soil busily cultivated; but neither round London nor still less
further south did I see men in the fields. In the Weald I could walk
for twenty miles without crossing anything but heath or woodlands,
rented as pheasant-shooting grounds to “London gentlemen,” as the
labourers said. “Ungrateful soil” was my first thought; but then I
would occasionally come to a farm at the crossing of two roads and
see the same soil bearing a rich crop; and my next thought was _tel
seigneur, telle terre_, as the French peasants say. Later on I saw
the rich fields of the midland counties; but even there I was struck
by not perceiving the same busy human labour which I was accustomed
to admire on the Belgian and French fields. But I ceased to wonder
when I learnt that only 1,383,000 men and women in England and
Wales work in the fields, while more than 16,000,000 belong to the
“professional, domestic, indefinite, and unproductive class,” as
these pitiless statisticians say. One million human beings cannot
productively cultivate an area of 33,000,000 acres, unless they can
resort to the Bonanza farm’s methods of culture.
Again, taking Harrow as the centre of my excursions, I could walk
five miles towards London, or turning my back upon it, and I could
see nothing east or west but meadow land on which they hardly cropped
two tons of hay per acre--scarcely enough to keep alive one milch
cow on each two acres. Man is conspicuous by his absence from those
meadows; he rolls them with a heavy roller in the spring; he spreads
some manure every two or three years; then he disappears until the
time has come to make hay. And that--within ten miles from Charing
Cross, close to a city with 5,000,000 inhabitants, supplied with
Flemish and Jersey potatoes, French salads and Canadian apples. In
the hands of the Paris gardeners, each thousand acres situated within
the same distance from the city would be cultivated by at least 2,000
human beings, who would get vegetables to the value of from £50 to
£300 per acre. But here the acres which only need human hands to
become an inexhaustible source of golden crops lie idle, and they say
to us, “Heavy clay!” without even knowing that in the hands of man
there are no unfertile soils; that the most fertile soils are not in
the prairies of America, nor in the Russian steppes; that they are in
the peat-bogs of Ireland, on the sand downs of the northern sea-coast
of France, on the craggy mountains of the Rhine, where they have been
made by man’s hands.
The most striking fact is, however, that in some undoubtedly fertile
parts of the country things are even in a worse condition. My heart
simply ached when I saw the state in which land is kept in South
Devon, and when I learned to know what “permanent pasture” means.
Field after field is covered with nothing but grass, three inches
high, and thistles in profusion. Twenty, thirty such fields can
be seen at one glance from the top of every hill; and thousands
of acres are in that state, notwithstanding that the grandfathers
of the present generation have devoted a formidable amount of
labour to the clearing of that land from the stones, to fencing it,
roughly draining it and the like. In every direction I could see
abandoned cottages and orchards going to ruin. A whole population
has disappeared, and even its last vestiges must disappear if things
continue to go on as they have gone. And this takes place in a part
of the country endowed with a most fertile soil and possessed of a
climate which is certainly more congenial than the climate of Jersey
in spring and early summer--a land upon which even the poorest
cottagers occasionally raise potatoes as early as the first half of
May. But how can that land be cultivated when there is nobody to
cultivate it? “We have fields; men go by, but never go in,” an old
labourer said to me; and so it is in reality.[41]
Such were my impressions of British agriculture twenty years ago.
Unfortunately, both the official statistical data and the mass
of private evidence published since tend to show that but little
improvement took place in the general conditions of agriculture in
this country within the last twenty years. Some successful attempts
in various new directions have been made in different parts of the
country, and I will have the pleasure to mention them further on, the
more so as they show what a quite average soil in these islands can
give when it is properly treated. But over large areas, especially
in the southern counties, the general conditions are even worse than
they were twenty years ago.
Altogether one cannot read the mass of review and newspaper articles,
and books dealing with British agriculture that have been published
lately, without realising that the agricultural depression which
began in the “seventies” and the “eighties” of the nineteenth century
had causes much more deeply seated than the fall in the prices of
wheat in consequence of American competition. However, it would lie
beyond the scope of this book to enter here into such a discussion.
Moreover, anyone who will read a few review articles written from
the points of view of different parties, or consult such books as
that of Mr. Christopher Turnor,[42] or study the elaborate inquest
made by Rider Haggard in twenty-six counties of England--paying
more attention to the _data_ accumulated in this book than to
the sometimes biassed conclusions of the author--will soon see
himself what are the causes which hamper the development of British
agriculture.[43]
In Scotland the conditions are equally bad. The population described
as “rural” is in a steady decrease: in 1911 it was already less than
800,000; and as regards the agricultural labourers, their number has
decreased by 42,370 (from 135,970 to 93,600) in the twenty years,
1881 to 1901. _The land goes out of culture_, while the area under
“deer forests”--that is, under hunting grounds established upon what
formerly was _arable_ land for the amusement of the rich--increases
at an appalling rate. No need to say that at the same time the Scotch
population is emigrating, and Scotland is depopulated at an appalling
speed.
My chief purpose being to show here what _can and ought to be_
obtained from the land under a proper and intelligent treatment,
I shall only indicate one of the disadvantages of the systems of
husbandry in vogue in this country. Both landlords and farmers
gradually came of late to pursue other aims than that of obtaining
from the land the greatest amount of produce than can be obtained;
and when this problem of a maximum productivity of the land arose
before the European nations, and therefore a complete modification of
the methods of husbandry was rendered imperative, such a modification
was _not_ accomplished in this country. While in France, Belgium,
Germany and Denmark the agriculturists did their best to meet the
effects of American competition by rendering their culture more
intensive in all directions, in this country the already antiquated
method of reducing the area under corn crops and laying land for
grass continues to prevail, although it ought to be evident that
mere _grazing_ will pay no more, and that some effort in the right
direction would increase the returns of the corn crops, as also those
of the roots and plants cultivated for industrial purposes. The land
continues to go out of culture, while the problem of the day is to
render culture more and more intensive.
Many causes have combined to produce that undesirable result. The
concentration of land-ownership in the hands of big landowners; the
high profits obtained previously; the development of a class of both
landlords and farmers who rely chiefly upon other incomes than those
they draw from the land, and for whom farming has thus become a sort
of pleasant by-occupation or sport; the rapid development of game
reserves for sportsmen, both British and foreign; the absence of
men of initiative who would have shown to the nation the necessity
of a new departure; the absence of a desire to win the necessary
knowledge, and the absence of institutions which could widely spread
practical agricultural knowledge and introduce improved seeds and
seedlings, as the Experimental Farms of the United States and Canada
are doing; the dislike of that spirit of agricultural co-operation to
which the Danish farmers owe their successes, and so on--all these
stand in the way of the unavoidable change in the methods of farming,
and produce the results of which the British writers on agriculture
are complaining.[44] But it is self-evident that in order to compete
with countries where machinery is largely used and new methods of
farming are resorted to (including the industrial treatment of farm
produce in sugar works, starch works, and the drying of vegetables,
etc., connected with farming), the old methods cannot do; especially
when the farmer has to pay a rent of twenty, forty, and occasionally
fifty shillings per acre for wheat-lands.
* * * * *
It may be said, of course, that this opinion strangely contrasts with
the well-known superiority of British agriculture. Do we not know,
indeed, that British crops average twenty-eight to thirty bushels
of wheat per acre, while in France they reach only from seventeen
to twenty bushels? Does it not stand in all almanacs that Britain
gets every year £200,000,000 sterling worth of animal produce--milk,
cheese, meat and wool--from her fields? All that is true, and there
is no doubt that in many respects British agriculture is superior to
that of many other nations. As regards obtaining the greatest amount
of produce with the least amount of labour, Britain undoubtedly took
the lead until she was superseded by America in the Bonanza farms
(now disappeared or rapidly disappearing). Again, as regards the fine
breeds of cattle, the splendid state of the meadows and the results
obtained in separate farms, there is much to be learned from Britain.
But a closer acquaintance with British agriculture as a whole
discloses many features of inferiority.
However splendid, a meadow remains a meadow, much inferior in
productivity to a corn-field; and the fine breeds of cattle appear
to be poor creatures as long as each ox requires three acres of land
to be fed upon. As regards the crops, certainly one may indulge in
some admiration at the average twenty-eight or thirty bushels grown
in this country; but when we learn that only 1,600,000 to 1,900,000
acres out of the cultivable 33,000,000 bear such crops, we are quite
disappointed. Anyone could obtain like results if he were to put all
his manure into one-twentieth part of the area which he possesses.
Again, the twenty-eight to thirty bushels no longer appear to us so
satisfactory when we learn that without any manuring, merely by means
of a good culture, they have obtained at Rothamstead an average of
14 bushels per acre from the same plot of land for forty consecutive
years;[45] while Mr. Prout, in his farm near Sawbridgeworth (Herts),
on a cold heavy clay, has obtained since 1861 crops of from thirty
to thirty-eight bushels of wheat, year after year, without any farm
manure at all, by good steam ploughing and artificial manure only.
(R. Haggard, I. 528.) Under the allotment system the crops reach
forty bushels. In some farms they occasionally attain even fifty and
fifty-seven bushels per acre.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Proportion of the cultivated area which is
given to cereals altogether, and to wheat, in Great Britain and
Ireland.]
If we intend to have a correct appreciation of British agriculture,
we must not base it upon what is obtained on a few selected and
well-manured plots; we must inquire what is done with the territory,
taken as a whole.[46] Now, out of each 1,000 acres of the aggregate
territory of England, Wales and Scotland, 435 acres are left under
wood, coppice, heath, buildings, and so on. We need not find fault
with that division, because it depends very much upon natural
causes. In France and Belgium one-third of the territory is in like
manner also treated as uncultivable, although portions of it are
continually reclaimed and brought under culture. But, leaving
aside the “uncultivable” portion, let us see what is done with the
565 acres out of 1,000 of the “cultivable” part (32,145,930 acres
in Great Britain in 1910). First of all, it is divided into two
parts, and one of them, the largest--308 acres out of 1,000--is left
under “permanent pasture,” that is, in most cases it is entirely
uncultivated. Very little hay is obtained from it,[47] and some
cattle are grazed upon it. More than one-half of the cultivable area
is thus left without cultivation, and only 257 acres out of each
1,000 acres are under culture. Out of these last, 124 acres are
under corn crops, twenty-one acres under potatoes, fifty-three acres
under green crops, and seventy-three acres under clover fields and
grasses under rotation. And finally, out of the 124 acres given to
corn crops, the best thirty-three, and some years only twenty-five
acres (one-fortieth part of the territory, one-twenty-third of the
cultivable area), are picked out and sown with wheat. They are
well cultivated, well manured, and upon them an average of from
twenty-eight to thirty bushels to the acre is obtained; and upon
these twenty-five or thirty acres out of 1,000 the world superiority
of British agriculture is based.
The net result of all that is, that on nearly 33,000,000 acres
of cultivable land the food is grown for one-third part only of
the population (more than two-thirds of the food it consumes
is imported), and we may say accordingly that, although nearly
two-thirds of the territory is cultivable, British agriculture
provides home-grown food for each 125 or 135 inhabitants only per
square mile (out of 466). In other words, nearly three acres of the
_cultivable area_ are required to grow the food for each person. Let
us then see what is done with the land in France and Belgium.
* * * * *
Now, if we simply compare the average thirty bushels per acre of
wheat in Great Britain with the average nineteen to twenty bushels
grown in France within the last ten years, the comparison is all
in favour of these islands; but such averages are of little value
because the two systems of agriculture are totally different in
the two countries. The Frenchman also has his picked and heavily
manured “twenty-five to thirty acres” in the north of France and in
Ile-de-France, and from these picked acres he obtains average crops
ranging from thirty to thirty-three bushels.[48] However, he sows
with wheat, not only the best picked out acres, but also such fields
on the Central Plateau and in Southern France as hardly yield ten,
eight and even six bushels to the acre, without irrigation; and these
low crops reduce the average for the whole country.
The Frenchman cultivates much that is left here under permanent
pasture--and this is what is described as his “inferiority” in
agriculture. In fact, although the proportion between what we have
named the “cultivable area” and the total territory is very much the
same in France as it is in Great Britain (624 acres out of each 1,000
acres of the territory), the area under wheat crops is nearly _six
times_ as great, in proportion, as what it is in Great Britain (182
acres instead of twenty-five or thirty, out of each 1,000 acres): the
corn crops altogether cover nearly two-fifths of the cultivable area
(375 acres out of 1000), and large areas are given besides to green
crops, industrial crops, vine, fruit and vegetables.
Taking everything into consideration, although the Frenchman keeps
less cattle, and especially grazes less sheep than the Briton, he
nevertheless obtains from his soil nearly all the food that he and
his cattle consume. He imports, in an average year, but one-tenth
only of what the nation consumes, and he exports to this country
considerable quantities of food produce (£10,000,000 worth), not only
from the south, but also, and especially, from the shores of the
Channel (Brittany butter and vegetables; fruit and vegetables from
the suburbs of Paris, and so on).[49]
The net result is that, although one-third part of the territory is
also treated as “uncultivable,” the soil of France yields the food
for 170 inhabitants per square mile (out of 188), that is, for forty
persons more, per square mile, than this country.[50]
It is thus apparent that the comparison with France is not so much in
favour of this country as it is said to be; and it will be still less
favourable when we come, in our next chapter, to horticulture.
* * * * *
The comparison with Belgium is even more striking--the more so
as the two systems of culture are similar in both countries. To
begin with, in Belgium we also find an average crop of over thirty
bushels of wheat to the acre; but the area given to wheat is five
times as big as in Great Britain, in comparison to the cultivable
area, and the cereals cover two-fifths of the land available for
culture.[51] The land is so well cultivated that the average crops
for the years 1890-1899 (the very bad year of 1891 being left out
of account) were from twenty-six and a half to twenty-eight and a
half bushels per acre for winter wheat, and reached an average of
thirty-three and a half bushels in 1900-1904; over fifty-four bushels
for oats (thirty-five to forty-one and a half in Great Britain),
and from forty to forty-three and a half bushels for winter barley
(twenty-nine to thirty-five in Great Britain); while on no less
than 475,000 acres catch crops of swedes (3,345,000 tons), carrots
(155,000 tons), and more than 500,000 of lucerne and other grasses
were obtained.[52]
As to extraordinarily heavy crops, Mr. Seebohm Rowntree mentions,
for instance, the wheat crop in the commune of Oirbeck, near Louvain,
which was, in 1906, on the average, fifty-seven bushels per acre,
while the average of the whole country was only thirty-four bushels,
or a yield of 111½ bushels of oats in the commune of Neuve-Eglise,
while the average for Belgium was fifty-four bushels, and so on,
the average crops of several communes for some cereals being
seventy-three per cent. in excess of the average for Belgium, and
from 106 to 153 per cent. for roots.[53]
All taken, they grow in Belgium more than 76,000,000 bushels of
cereals--that is, fifteen and seven-tenths bushels per acre of the
cultivable area--while the corresponding figure for Great Britain is
only eight and a half bushels; and they keep almost twice as many
cattle upon each cultivable acre as is kept in Great Britain.[54]
Moreover, they even export cattle and horses. Up to 1890 Belgium
exported from 36,000 to 94,000 head of cattle, from 42,000 to 70,000
sheep, and from 60,000 to 108,600 swine. In 1890 these exports
suddenly came to an end--probably in consequence of a prohibition of
such imports into Germany. Only horses continue to be exported to the
amount of about 25,000 horses and foals every year.
Large portions of the land are given besides to the culture of
industrial plants, potatoes for spirit, beet for sugar, and so on.
However, it must not be believed that the soil of Belgium is more
fertile than the soil of this country. On the contrary, to use the
words of Laveleye, “only one half, or less, of the territory offers
natural conditions which are favourable for agriculture”; the other
half consists of a gravelly soil, or sands, “the natural sterility of
which could be overpowered only by heavy manuring.” Man, not nature,
has given to the Belgium soil its present productivity. With this
soil and labour, Belgium succeeds in supplying nearly all the food
of a population which is denser than that of England and Wales, and
numbers 589 inhabitants to the square mile.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Proportion of the cultivated area which is
given to cereals altogether, and to wheat, in Belgium. The square
which encloses the wheat square represents the area given to both
wheat and a mixture of wheat with rye.]
If the exports and imports of agricultural produce from and into
Belgium be taken into account, we can ask ourselves whether
Laveleye’s conclusions are not still good, and whether only one
inhabitant out of each ten to twenty requires imported food. In the
years 1880-1885 the soil of Belgium supplied with home-grown food
no less than 490 _inhabitants per square mile_, and there remained
something for export--no less than £1,000,000 worth of agricultural
produce being exported every year to Great Britain. But it is not
possible to say with certitude whether the conditions are the same at
the present time.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Proportion of cultivated and uncultivated
areas in Great Britain, Belgium, and France. _a_, Wheat; _b_, wheat
and rye mixed; _c_, other cereals; _d′_, green crops; _d_, permanent
pasture; _e_, uncultivated.]
Since 1880, when the duties on imported cereals were abolished
(they were before that sixpence for each 220 lb.), and corn could be
imported free, “the importers were no more obliged to make special
declarations for merchandise which had to be re-exported; they
declared their imports as if they were destined to be used within
the country.”[55] The result was, that while in the year 1870 the
imports of cereals were 154 lb. per head of population, the same
imports rose to 286 lb. in 1880. But no one can say how much of these
286 lb. is consumed in Belgium itself; and if we deduct from the
total of the imports the quantities re-exported the same year, we
obtain figures which cannot be relied upon.[56] It is therefore safer
to consider the figures of the _annual production_ of cereals in
Belgium, such as they are given in the official _Annuaire_.
Now, if we take the figures given in the _Annuaire Statistique de la
Belgique_ for the year 1911, we come to the following results. The
annual agricultural census, which is being made since 1901, gives for
the year 1909 that 2,290,300,000 lb. of wheat, rye, and wheat mixed
with rye were obtained on all the farms of Belgium larger than two
and a half acres (2,002,000,000 lb. in 1895). Besides, 219,200,000
lb. of barley, 1,393,000,000 lb. of oats, and a considerable quantity
of oleaginous grains have been produced.
It is generally accepted that the average consumption of both winter
and spring cereals attains 502 lb. per head of population; and as the
population of Belgium was 7,000,000 on January 1, 1907, it appears
that no less than 3,524,400,000 lb. of cereals would have been
required to supply the annual food of the population. If we compare
this figure with that of the annual production just mentioned, we
see then that, notwithstanding the considerable decrease of the area
given to wheat since the abolition of the entrance duties, Belgium
still produces at least _two-thirds_ of the cereal food required for
its very dense population, which is nearly 600 persons per square
mile (596 in 1907).
It must be noticed that we should have come to a still higher figure
if we took into account the other cereals (to say nothing of the
leguminous plants and vegetables grown and consumed in Belgium),
and still more so if we took into account what is grown upon the
small holdings less than two and a half acres each. The number of
such small holdings was 554,041 in 1895, and the number of people
living upon them reached nearly 2,000,000. _They are not included in
the official statistics, and yet upon most of them some cereals are
grown_, in addition to vegetables and fodder for cattle.
If Belgium produces in cereals the food of more than two-thirds
of its very dense population, this is already a quite respectable
figure; but it must also be said that it exports every year
considerable quantities of products of the soil. Thus, in the year
1910 she exported 254,730 tons of vegetables (as against 187,000
imported), 40,000 tons of fruit, 34,000 tons of plants and flowers
(the whole nearly £3,000,000 worth), 256,000 of oleaginous grains,
18,500 tons of wool, nearly 60,000 tons of flax, and so on. I do not
mention the exports of butter, rabbits, skins, an immense quantity
of sugar (about 180,000 tons), the vegetable oils and the spirits,
because considerable quantities of beet and potatoes are imported. In
short, we have here _an export_ of agricultural produce grown in the
country itself attaining the figure of 48s. per head of population.
All taken, there is thus no possibility of contesting the fact, that
if the soil of Great Britain were cultivated only as the unfertile
soil of Belgium is cultivated--notwithstanding all the social
obstacles which stand in the way of an intensive culture, in Belgium
as elsewhere--a much greater part of the population of these islands
would obtain its food from the soil of its own land than is the case
nowadays.[57]
On the other side it must not be forgotten that Belgium is a
manufacturing country which exports, moreover, manufactured home-made
goods to the value of 198s. per head of population, and 150s. worth
of crude or half-manufactured produce, while the total exports from
the United Kingdom have only lately attained during the extraordinary
year of 1911 the value of 201s. per inhabitant. As to separate
parts of the Belgian territory, the small and naturally unfertile
province of West Flanders not only grew in 1890 the food of its 580
inhabitants on the square mile, but exported agricultural produce
to the value of 25s. per head of its population. And yet no one can
read Laveleye’s masterly work without coming to the conclusion that
Flemish agriculture would have realised still better results, were
it not hampered in its growth by the steady and heavy increase of
rent. In the face of the rent being increased each nine years, many
farmers have lately abstained from further improvements.
* * * * *
Another example of what could be achieved by means of an effort of
the nation seconded by its educated classes is given by Denmark.
After the war of 1864, which ended in the loss of one of their
provinces, the Danes made an effort widely to spread education
amongst their peasants, and to develop at the same time an intensive
culture of the soil. The result of these efforts is now quite
evident. The rural population of Denmark, instead of flocking to
the towns, has been increasing: in five years, 1906-1911, it rose
from 1,565,585 to 1,647,350. Out of a total population of 2,775,100,
no less than 990,900 find their living in agriculture, dairy work,
and forestry. With a very poor soil, they have a cultivated area
a trifle below 7,000,000 acres, out of which 2,773,320 acres are
under cereals. Their wheat crops are on the average 40-6/10 bushels
per acre, and the value of the home-grown food-stuffs is estimated
at £40,000,000, which makes a little less than £6 per acre. As
to their exports of home-grown produce, they exceed the imports
by £14,483,000. The chief cause of these successes are: A highly
developed agricultural education, town markets accessible to all the
growers, and, above all, co-operation, which again is a result of the
effort that was made by the educated classes after the unfortunate
war of 1864.
Everyone knows that it is now Danish butter which rules the prices
in the London market, and that this butter is of a high quality,
which can only be attained in co-operative creameries with cold
storage and certain uniform methods in producing butter. But it is
not generally known that the Siberian butter, which is now imported
in immense quantities into this country, is also a creation of the
Danish co-operators. When they began to export their butter in large
quantities, they used to import butter for their own use from the
southern parts of the West Siberian provinces of Tobolsk and Tomsk,
which are covered with prairies very similar to those of Winnipeg in
Canada. At the outset this butter was of a most inferior quality,
as it was made by every peasant household separately. The Danes
began therefore to teach co-operation to the Russian peasants, and
they were rapidly understood by the intelligent population of this
fertile region. The co-operative creameries began to spread with an
astounding rapidity, without us knowing for some time wherefrom came
this interesting movement. At the present time a steamer loaded with
Siberian butter leaves every week one of the Baltic ports and brings
to London many thousands of casks of Siberian butter. If I am not
wrong, Finland has also joined lately in the same export.
* * * * *
Without going as far as China, I might quote similar examples from
elsewhere, especially from Lombardy. But the above will be enough to
caution the reader against hasty conclusions as to the impossibility
of feeding 46,000,000 people from 78,000,000 acres. They also will
enable me to draw the following conclusions: (1) If the soil of the
United Kingdom were cultivated only as it _was_ forty-five years ago,
24,000,000 people, instead of 17,000,000, could live on home-grown
food; and this culture, while giving occupation to an additional
750,000 men, would give nearly 3,000,000 wealthy home customers to
the British manufactures. (2) If the cultivable area of the United
Kingdom were cultivated as the soil is cultivated _on the average_ in
Belgium, the United Kingdom would have food for at least 37,000,000
inhabitants; and it might export agricultural produce without ceasing
to manufacture, so as freely to supply all the needs of a wealthy
population. And finally (3), if the population of this country came
to be doubled, all that would be required for producing the food
for 90,000,000 inhabitants would be to cultivate the soil as it is
cultivated in the best farms of this country, in Lombardy, and in
Flanders, and to utilise some meadows, which at present lie almost
unproductive, in the same way as the neighbourhoods of the big cities
in France are utilised for market-gardening. All these are not fancy
dreams, but mere realities; nothing but the modest conclusions from
what we see round about us, without any allusion to the agriculture
of the future.
* * * * *
If we want, however, to know what agriculture _can be_, and what can
be grown on a given amount of soil, we must apply for information
to such regions as the district of Saffelare in East Flanders,
the island of Jersey, or the irrigated meadows of Lombardy, which
are mentioned in the next chapter. Or else we may apply to the
market-gardeners in this country, or in the neighbourhoods of Paris,
or in Holland, or to the “truck farms” in America, and so on.
While science devotes its chief attention to industrial pursuits, a
limited number of lovers of nature and a legion of workers whose very
names will remain unknown to posterity have created of late a quite
new agriculture, as superior to modern farming as modern farming is
superior to the old three-fields system of our ancestors. Science
seldom guided them, and sometimes misguided--as was the case with
Liebig’s theories, developed to the extreme by his followers, who
induced us to treat plants as glass recipients of chemical drugs, and
who forgot that the only science capable of dealing with life and
growth is physiology, not chemistry. Science seldom has guided them:
they proceeded in the empirical way; but, like the cattle-growers
who opened new horizons to biology, they have opened a new field
of experimental research for the physiology of plants. They have
created a totally new agriculture. They smile when we boast about the
rotation system, having permitted us to take from the field one crop
every year, or four crops each three years, because their ambition
is to have six and nine crops from the very same plot of land during
the twelve months. They do not understand our talk about good and bad
soils, because they make the soil themselves, and make it in such
quantities as to be compelled yearly to sell some of it: otherwise
it would raise up the level of their gardens by half an inch every
year. They aim at cropping, not five or six tons of grass on the
acre, as we do, but from 50 to 100 tons of various vegetables on the
same space; not £5 worth of hay but £100 worth of vegetables, of the
plainest description, cabbage and carrots, and more than £200 worth
under intensive horticultural treatment. This is where agriculture is
going now.
We know that the dearest of all varieties of our staple food is
meat; and those who are not vegetarians, either by persuasion or
by necessity, consume on the average 225 lb. of meat--that is,
roughly speaking, a little less than the third part of an ox--every
year. And we have seen that, even in this country, and Belgium, two
to three acres are wanted for keeping one head of horned cattle;
so that a community of, say, 1,000,000 inhabitants would have to
reserve somewhere about 1,000,000 acres of land for supplying it with
meat. But if we go to the farm of M. Goppart--one of the promoters
of _ensilage_ in France--we shall see him growing, on a drained
and well-manured field, no less than an average of 120,000 lb. of
corn-grass to the acre, which gives 30,000 lb. of dry hay--that is,
the food of one horned beast per acre. The produce is thus trebled.
As to beetroot, which is used also for feeding cattle, Mr. Champion,
at Whitby, succeeded, with the help of sewage, in growing 100,000
lb. of beet on each acre, and occasionally 150,000 and 200,000 lb.
He thus grew on each acre the food of, at least, two or three head
of cattle. And such crops are not isolated facts; thus, M. Gros, at
Autun, succeeds in cropping 600,000 lb. of beet and carrots, which
crop would permit him to keep four horned cattle on each acre. In
fact, crops of 100,000 lb. of beet occur in numbers in the French
competitions, and the success depends entirely upon good culture and
appropriate manuring. It thus appears that while under ordinary high
farming we need 2,000,000 acres, or more, to keep 1,000,000 horned
cattle, double that amount could be kept on one-half of that area;
and if the density of population required it, the amount of cattle
could be doubled again, and the area required to keep it might still
be one-half, or even one-third of what it is now.[58]
_French Gardening._--The above examples are striking enough, and
yet those afforded by the market-gardening culture are still more
striking. I mean the culture carried on in the neighbourhood of big
cities, and more especially the _culture maraîchère_ round Paris. In
this culture each plant is treated according to its age. The seeds
germinate and the seedlings develop their first four leaflets in
especially favourable conditions of soil and temperature; then the
best seedlings are picked out and transplanted into a bed of fine
loam, under a frame or in the open air, where they freely develop
their rootlets, and, gathered on a limited space, receive more than
the usual care. Only after this preliminary training are they bedded
in the open ground, where they grow till ripe. In such a culture the
primitive condition of the soil is of little account, because loam
is made out of the old forcing beds. The seeds are carefully tried,
the seedlings receive proper attention, and there is no fear of
drought, because of the variety of crops, the liberal watering with
the help of a steam engine, and the stock of plants always kept ready
to replace the weakest individuals. Almost each plant is treated
individually.
There prevails, however, with regard to market-gardening, a
misunderstanding which it would be well to remove. It is generally
supposed that what chiefly attracts market-gardening to the great
centres of population is the market. It must have been so; and so it
may be still, but to some extent only. A great number of the Paris
_maraîchers_, even of those who have their gardens within the walls
of the city and whose main crop consists of vegetables in season,
export the whole of their produce to England. What chiefly attracts
the gardener to the great cities is stable manure; and this is not
wanted so much for increasing the richness of the soil--one-tenth
part of the manure used by the French gardeners would do for that
purpose--but for keeping the soil at a certain temperature. Early
vegetables pay best, and in order to obtain early produce not only
the air but the soil as well must be warmed; and this is done by
putting great quantities of properly mixed manure into the soil;
its fermentation heats it. But it is evident that with the present
development of industrial skill, the heating of the soil could be
obtained more economically and more easily by hot-water pipes.
Consequently, the French gardeners begin more and more to make use
of portable pipes, or _thermosiphons_, provisionally established in
the cool frames. This new improvement becomes of general use, and
we have the authority of Barral’s _Dictionnaire d’Agriculture_ to
affirm that it gives excellent results. Under this system stable
manure is used mainly for producing loam.[59]
As to the different degrees of fertility of the soil--always the
stumbling-block of those who write about agriculture--the fact
is that in market-gardening the soil is always _made_, whatever
it originally may have been. Consequently--we are told by Prof.
Dybowski, in the article “Maraîchers” in Barral’s _Dictionnaire
d’Agriculture_--it is now a usual stipulation of the renting
contracts of the Paris _maraîchers_ that the gardener may carry
away his soil, down to a certain depth, when he quits his tenancy.
He himself makes it, and when he moves to another plot he carts his
soil away, together with his frames, his water-pipes, and his other
belongings.[60]
I could not relate here all the marvels achieved in market-gardening;
so that I must refer the reader to works--most interesting
works--especially devoted to the subject, and give only a few
illustrations.[61] Let us take, for instance, the orchard--the
_marais_--of M. Ponce, the author of a well-known work on the
_culture maraîchère_. His orchard covered only two and seven-tenths
acres. The outlay for the establishment, including a steam engine for
watering purposes, reached £1,136. Eight persons, M. Ponce included,
cultivated the orchard and carried the vegetables to the market, for
which purpose one horse was kept; when returning from Paris they
brought in manure, for which £100 was spent every year. Another
£100 was spent in rent and taxes. But how to enumerate all that was
gathered every year on this plot of less than three acres, without
filling two pages or more with the most wonderful figures? One must
read them in M. Ponce’s work, but here are the chief items: More
than 20,000 lb. of carrots; more than 20,000 lb. of onions, radishes
and other vegetables sold by weight; 6,000 heads of cabbage; 3,000
of cauliflower; 5,000 baskets of tomatoes; 5,000 dozen of choice
fruit; and 154,000 heads of salad; in short, a total of 250,000 lb.
of vegetables. The soil was made to such an amount out of forcing
beds that every year 250 cubic yards of loam had to be sold. Similar
examples could be given by the dozen, and the best evidence against
any possible exaggeration of the results is the very high rent paid
by the gardeners, which reaches in the suburbs of London from £10 to
£15 per acre, and in the suburbs of Paris attains as much as £32 per
acre. No less than 2,125 acres are cultivated round Paris in that
way by 5,000 persons, and thus not only the 2,000,000 Parisians are
supplied with vegetables, but the surplus is also sent to London.
The above results are obtained with the help of warm frames,
thousands of glass bells, and so on. But even without such costly
things, with only thirty-six yards of frames for seedlings,
vegetables are grown _in the open air_ to the value of £200 per
acre.[62] It is obvious, however, that in such cases the high selling
prices of the crops are not due to the high prices fetched by early
vegetables in winter; they are entirely due to the high crops of the
plainest ones.
Let me add also that all this wonderful culture has entirely
developed in the second half of the nineteenth century. Before that,
it was quite primitive. But now the Paris gardener not only defies
the soil--he would grow the same crops on an asphalt pavement--he
defies climate. His walls, which are built to reflect light and
to protect the wall-trees from the northern winds, his wall-tree
shades and glass protectors, his frames and _pépinières_ have made
a real garden, a rich Southern garden, out of the suburbs of Paris.
He has given to Paris the “two degrees less of latitude” after
which a French scientific writer was longing; he supplies his city
with mountains of grapes and fruit at any season; and in the early
spring he inundates and perfumes it with flowers. But he does not
only grow articles of luxury. The culture of plain vegetables on a
large scale is spreading every year; and the results are so good
that there are now practical _maraîchers_ who venture to maintain
that if all the food, animal and vegetable, necessary for 4,500,000
inhabitants of the departments of Seine and Seine-et-Oise had to be
grown on their own territory (3,250 square miles), it could be grown
without resorting to any other methods of culture than those already
in use--methods already tested on a large scale and proved to be
successful.
* * * * *
And yet the Paris gardener is not our ideal of an agriculturist. In
the painful work of civilisation he has shown us the way to follow;
but the ideal of modern civilisation is elsewhere. He toils, with
but a short interruption, from three in the morning till late in the
night. He knows no leisure; he has no time to live the life of a
human being; the commonwealth does not exist for him; his world is
his garden, more than his family. He cannot be our ideal; neither
he nor his system of agriculture. Our ambition is, that he should
produce even _more_ than he does with _less_ labour, and should enjoy
all the joys of human life. And this is fully possible.
As a matter of fact, if we put aside those gardeners who chiefly
cultivate the so-called _primeurs_--strawberries ripened in January,
and the like--if we take only those who grow their crops in the
open field, and resort to frames exclusively for the earlier days
of the life of the plant, and if we analyse their system, we see
that its very essence is, first, to create for the plant a nutritive
and porous soil, which contains both the necessary decaying organic
matter and the inorganic compounds; and then to keep that soil and
the surrounding atmosphere at a temperature and moisture superior
to those of the open air. The whole system is summed up in these
few words. If the French _maraîcher_ spends prodigies of labour,
intelligence, and imagination in combining different kinds of
manure, so as to make them ferment at a given speed, he does so for
no purpose but the above: a nourishing soil, and a desired equal
temperature and moisture of the air and the soil. All his empirical
art is devoted to the achievement of these two aims. But both can
also be achieved in another and much easier way. The soil can be
_improved_ by hand, but it need not be _made_ by hand. Any soil, of
any desired composition, can be made by machinery. We already have
manufactures of manure, engines for pulverising the phosphorites, and
even the granites of the Vosges; and we shall see manufactures of
loam as soon as there is a demand for them.
It is obvious that at present, when fraud and adulteration are
exercised on such an immense scale in the manufacture of artificial
manure, and the manufacture of manure is considered as a chemical
process, while it ought to be considered as a physiological one,
the gardener prefers to spend an unimaginable amount of labour
rather than risk his crop by the use of a pompously labelled and
unworthy drug. But that is a social obstacle which depends upon a
want of knowledge and a bad social organisation, not upon physical
causes.[63]
Of course, the necessity of creating for the earlier life of the
plant a warm soil and atmosphere will always remain, and sixty years
ago Léonce de Lavergne foretold that the next step in culture would
be to warm the soil. But heating pipes give the same results as the
fermenting manures at a much smaller expense of human labour. And
already the system works on a large scale, as will be seen from the
next chapter. Through it the productive powers of a given area of
land are increased more than a hundred times.
It is obvious that now, when the capitalist system makes us pay for
everything three or four times its labour value, we often spend
about £1 for each square yard of a heated conservatory. But how many
middlemen are making fortunes on the wooden sashes imported from
Drontheim? If we only could reckon our expenses in labour, we should
discover to our amazement that, thanks to the use of machinery, the
square yard of a conservatory does not cost more than half a day of
human labour; and we will see presently that the Jersey and Guernsey
average for cultivating one acre under glass is only three men
working ten hours a day. Therefore the conservatory, which formerly
was a luxury, is rapidly entering into the domain of high culture.
And we may foresee the day when the glass conservatory will be
considered as a necessary appendix to the field, both for the growth
of those fruits and vegetables which cannot succeed in the open air,
and for the preliminary training of most cultural plants during the
earlier stages of their life.
Home-grown fruit is always preferable to the half-ripe produce which
is imported from abroad, and the additional work required for keeping
a young plant under glass is largely repaid by the incomparable
superiority of the crops. As to the question of labour, when we
remember the incredible amount of labour which has been spent on the
Rhine and in Switzerland for making the vineyards, their terraces,
and stone walls, and for carrying the soil up the stony crags, as
also the amount of labour which is spent every year for the culture
of those vineyards and fruit gardens, we are inclined to ask, which
of the two, all taken, requires less of human labour--a vinery (I
mean the cold vinery) in a London suburb, or a vineyard on the
Rhine, or on Lake Leman? And when we compare the prices realised by
the grower of grapes round London (not those which are paid in the
West-end fruit shops, but those received by the grower for his grapes
in September and October) with those current in Switzerland or on
the Rhine during the same months, we are inclined to maintain that
nowhere in Europe, beyond the forty-fifth degree of latitude, are
grapes grown at less expense of human labour, both for capital outlay
and yearly work, than in the vineries of the London and Brussels
suburbs.
At any rate, let us not overrate the productivity of the exporting
countries, and let us remember that the vine-growers of Southern
Europe drink themselves an abominable _piquette_; that Marseilles
fabricates wine for home use out of dry raisins brought from Asia;
and that the Normandy peasant who sends his apples to London, drinks
real cider only on great festivities. Such a state of things will
not last for ever; and the day is not far when we shall be compelled
to look to our own resources to provide many of the things which we
now import. And we shall not be the worse for that. The resources of
science, both in enlarging the circle of our production and in new
discoveries, are inexhaustible. And each new branch of activity calls
into existence more and more new branches, which steadily increase
the power of man over the forces of nature.
If we take all into consideration; if we realise the progress made
of late in the gardening culture, and the tendency towards spreading
its methods to the open field; if we watch the cultural experiments
which are being made now--experiments to-day and realities
to-morrow--and ponder over the resources kept in store by science,
we are bound to say that _it is utterly impossible to foresee at the
present moment the limits as to the_ maximum _number of human beings
who could draw their means of subsistence from a given area of land_,
or as to what a variety of produce they could advantageously grow in
any latitude. Each day widens former limits, and opens new and wide
horizons. All we can say now is, that, _even now_, 600 persons could
easily live on a square mile; and that, with cultural methods already
used on a large scale, 1,000 human beings--not idlers--living on
1,000 acres could easily, without any kind of overwork, obtain from
that area a luxurious vegetable and animal food, as well as the flax,
wool, silk, and hides necessary for their clothing. As to what may
be obtained under still more perfect methods--also known but not yet
tested on a large scale--it is better to abstain from any forecast:
so unexpected are the recent achievements of intensive culture.
We thus see that the over-population fallacy does not stand the very
first attempt at submitting it to a closer examination. Those only
can be horror-stricken at seeing the population of this country
increase by one individual every 1,000 seconds who think of a human
being as a mere claimant upon the stock of material wealth of
mankind, without being at the same time a contributor to that stock.
But we, who see in each new-born babe a future _worker_ capable of
producing much more than his own share of the common stock--we greet
his appearance.
We know that a crowded population is a necessary condition for
permitting man to increase the productive powers of his labour. We
know that highly productive labour is impossible so long as men are
scattered, few in numbers, over wide territories, and are thus unable
to combine together for the higher achievements of civilisation. We
know what an amount of labour must be spent to scratch the soil with
a primitive plough, to spin and weave by hand; and we know also how
much less labour it costs to grow the same amount of food and weave
the same cloth with the help of modern machinery.
We also see that it is infinitely easier to grow 200,000 lb. of food
on one acre than to grow them on ten acres. It is all very well
to imagine that wheat grows by itself on the Russian steppes; but
those who have seen how the peasant toils in the “fertile” black
earth region will have one desire: that the increase of population
may permit the use of the steam-digger and gardening culture in the
steppes; that it may permit those who are now the beasts of burden of
humanity to raise their backs and to become at last men.
* * * * *
We must, however, recognise that there are a few economists fully
aware of the above truths. They gladly admit that Western Europe
could grow much more food than it does; but they see no necessity nor
advantage in doing so, as long as there are nations which can supply
food in exchange for manufactured goods. Let us then examine how far
this view is correct.
It is obvious that if we are satisfied with merely stating that it is
cheaper to bring wheat from Riga than to grow it in Lincolnshire, the
whole question is settled in a moment. But is it so in reality? Is it
really cheaper to have food from abroad? And, supposing it is, are we
not yet bound to analyse that compound result which we call price,
rather than to accept it as a supreme and blind ruler of our actions?
We know, for instance, how French agriculture is burdened by
taxation. And yet, if we compare the prices of articles of food in
France, which herself grows most of them, with the prices in this
country, which imports them, we find no difference in favour of the
importing country. On the contrary, the balance is rather in favour
of France, and it decidedly was so for wheat until the new protective
tariff was introduced. As soon as one goes out of Paris, one finds
that every _home produce_ is cheaper in France than it is in England,
and that the prices decrease further when we go farther East on the
Continent.
There is another feature still more unfavourable for this country:
namely, the enormous development of the class of middlemen who
stand between the importer and the home producer on the one side
and the consumer on the other. We have lately heard a good deal
about the quite disproportionate part of the prices we pay which
goes into the middleman’s pockets. We have all heard of the East-end
clergyman who was compelled to become butcher in order to save his
parishioners from the greedy middleman. We read in the papers that
many farmers of the midland counties do not realise more than 9d.
for a pound of butter, while the customer pays from 1s. 6d. to 1s.
8d.; and that from 1½d. to 2d. for the quart of milk is all that the
Cheshire farmers can get, while we pay 4d. for the adulterated, and
5d. for the unadulterated milk. An analysis of the Covent Garden
prices and a comparison of the same with retail prices, which is
being made from time to time in the daily papers, proves that the
customer pays for vegetables at the rate of 6d. to 1s., and sometimes
more, for each penny realised by the grower. But in a country of
imported food it _must_ be so: the grower who himself sells his own
produce disappears from its markets, and in his place appears the
middleman.[64] If we move, however, towards the East, and go to
Belgium, Germany, and Russia, we find that the cost of living is
more and more reduced, so that finally we find that in Russia, which
remains still agricultural, wheat costs one-half or two-thirds of its
London prices, and meat is sold throughout the provinces at about
ten farthings (kopecks) the pound. And we may therefore hold that it
is not yet proved at all that it is cheaper to live on imported food
than to grow it ourselves.
But if we analyse _price_, and make a distinction between its
different elements, the disadvantage becomes still more apparent.
If we compare, for instance, the costs of growing wheat in this
country and in Russia, we are told that in the United Kingdom the
hundredweight of wheat cannot be grown at less than 8s. 7d.; while
in Russia the costs of production of the same hundredweight are
estimated at from 3s. 6d. to 4s. 9d.[65] The difference is enormous,
and it would still remain very great even if we admit that there is
some exaggeration in the former figure. But why this difference? Are
the Russian labourers paid so much less for their work? Their money
wages surely are much lower, but the difference is equalised as soon
as we reckon their wages in produce. The twelve shillings a week
of the British agricultural labourer represents the same amount of
wheat in Britain as the six shillings a week of the Russian labourer
represents in Russia. As to the supposed prodigious fertility of
the soil in the Russian prairies, it is a fallacy. Crops of from
sixteen to twenty-three bushels per acre are considered good crops
in Russia, while the average hardly reaches thirteen bushels, even
in the corn-exporting parts of the empire. Besides, the amount
of labour which is necessary to grow wheat in Russia with no
thrashing-machines, with a plough dragged by a horse hardly worth
the name, with no roads for transport, and so on, is certainly much
greater than the amount of labour which is necessary to grow the same
amount of wheat in Western Europe.
When brought to the London market, Russian wheat was sold in 1887
at 31s. the quarter, while it appeared from the same _Mark Lane
Express_ figures that the quarter of wheat could not be grown in
this country at less than 36s. 8d., even if the straw be sold, which
is not always the case. But the difference of the land rent in both
countries would alone account for the difference of prices. In the
wheat belt of Russia, where the average rent stood at about 12s.
per acre, and the crop was from fifteen to twenty bushels, the rent
amounted to from 3s. 6d. to 5s. 8d. in the costs of production of
each quarter of Russian wheat; while in this country, where the rent
and taxes are valued (in the _Mark Lane Express_ figures) at no less
than 40s. per each wheat-growing acre, and the crop is taken at
thirty bushels, the rent amounts to 10s. in the costs of production
of each quarter.[66] But even if we take only 30s. per acre of rent
and taxes, and an average crop of twenty-eight bushels, we still have
8s. 8d. out of the sale price of each quarter of wheat, which goes to
the landlord and the State. If it costs so much more in money to grow
wheat in this country, while the amount of labour is so much less in
this country than in Russia, it is due to the very great height of
the land rents attained during the years 1860-1880. But this growth
itself was due to the facilities for realising large profits on the
sale of manufactured goods abroad. The false condition of British
rural economy, not the infertility of the soil, is thus the chief
cause of the Russian competition.
Twenty-five years have passed since I wrote these lines--the
agricultural crisis provoked by the competition of cheap American
wheat being at that time at its climax, and, I am sorry to say, I
must leave these lines such as they were written. I do not mean,
of course, that no adaptation to the new conditions created by
the fall in the prices of wheat should have taken place during
the last quarter of a century, in the sense of a more intensive
culture and a better utilisation of the land. On the contrary, I
mention in different parts of this book the progress accomplished
of late in the development of separate branches of intensive
culture, such as fruit-culture, market-gardening, culture under
glass, French gardening, and poultry farming, and I also indicate
the different steps taken to promote further improvements, such as
better conditions of transport, co-operation among the farmers, and
especially the development of small holdings.
However, after having taken into account all these improvements,
one cannot but see with regret that the same regressive movement in
British agriculture, which began in the ’seventies, continues still;
and while more and more of the land that was once under the plough
goes out of culture, no corresponding increase in the quantities of
live stock is to be seen. And if we consult the mass of books and
review articles which have been dealing lately with this subject, we
see that all the writers recognise that British agriculture _must_
adapt itself to the new conditions by a thorough reform of its
general character; and yet the same writers recognise that only a
few steps were taken till now in the proper direction, and none of
them was taken with a sufficient energy. Society at large remains
indifferent to the needs of British agriculture.
It must not be forgotten that the competition of American wheat
has made the same havoc in the agriculture of most European
countries--especially in France and Belgium; but in the last two
countries the adaptations which were necessary to resist the
effects of the competition have already taken place to a great
extent. Both in Belgium and in France the American imports gave a
new impetus toward a more intensive utilisation of the soil, and
this impetus was strongest in Belgium, where no attempt was made
to protect agriculture by an increase of the import duties, as was
the case in France. On the contrary, the duties upon imported wheat
were abolished in Belgium precisely at the time when the American
competition began to be felt--that is, between 1870 and 1880.
It was not only in England that the fall in the prices of wheat was
felt acutely by the farmers. In France, the hectolitre of wheat (very
nearly three bushels), which was sold at 18s. 10d. in 1871-1875,
fell to 15s. 5d. in 1881-1885, and to 12s. 6d. in 1893; and the same
must have been in Belgium, the more so as the protective duties were
abolished. But here is what Mr. Seebohm Rowntree says about the
effect of the prices in his admirable book on land and labour in
Belgium:--
“For a time the Belgian agriculturist was hardly hit, but
gradually he adjusted himself to the new conditions. His
cultivation became more intensive, he made more and more use of
co-operation in various directions, and he devoted himself to new
branches of agriculture, especially the raising of live stock
and garden produce. He began to realise the value of artificial
manures, and to acknowledge that science could help him.”--_Land
and Labour_, p. 147.
These words by Mr. Rowntree are fully confirmed by the change in
the general aspects of the Belgian agriculture, as they appear from
the official statistical data. The same must be said of France. The
above-mentioned fall in prices induced agriculturists to intensify
their methods of culture. I have mentioned already the rapid
spreading of agricultural machinery among the French peasants during
the last twenty years; and I must mention also the equally remarkable
increase in the amounts of chemical manure used by the peasants;
the sudden development of agricultural syndicates since 1884; the
extension taken by co-operation; the new organisation of transport
with cool storage, or in heated cars, for the export of fruit and
flowers; the development taken by special industrial cultures; and
still more so the immense development of gardening in the South of
France and market-gardening in the North. All these adaptations were
introduced on such a scale that one is bound to recognise that the
crisis has had the effect of giving quite a new aspect to French
agriculture, taken as a whole.
* * * * *
Much more ought to be said with regard to the American competition,
and therefore I must refer the reader to the remarkable series
of articles dealing with the whole of the subject which
Schaeffle published in 1886 in the _Zeitschrift für die gesammte
Staatswissenschaft_, and to the most elaborate article on the costs
of growing wheat all over the world which appeared in April, 1887, in
the _Quarterly Review_. These articles were written at the time when
American competition was something new and made much havoc in English
agriculture, causing a fall of from 30 to 50 per cent. in the rents
of land for agricultural purposes. But the conclusions of these two
writers were fully corroborated by the yearly reports of the American
Board of Agriculture, and Schaeffle’s previsions were fully confirmed
by the subsequent reports of Mr. J. R. Dodge. It appeared from these
works that the fertility of the American soil had been grossly
exaggerated, as the masses of wheat which America sent to Europe from
its north-western farms were grown on a soil the natural fertility of
which is not higher, and often lower, than the average fertility of
the unmanured European soil. The Casselton farm in Dakota, with its
twenty bushels per acre, was an exception; while the average crop of
the chief wheat-growing States in the West was only eleven to twelve
bushels. In order to find a fertile soil in America, and crops of
from thirty to forty bushels, one must go to the old Eastern States,
where the soil is made by man’s hands.[67]
The same applies to the American supplies of meat. Schaeffle pointed
out that the great mass of live stock which appeared in the census
of cattle in the States was not reared in the prairies, but in
the stables of the farms, in the same way as in Europe; as to the
prairies, he found on them only one-eleventh part of the American
horned cattle, one-fifth of the sheep and one-twenty-first of the
pigs.[68] “Natural fertility” being thus out of question, we must
look for social causes; and we have them, for the Western States,
in the cheapness of land and a proper organisation of production;
and for the Eastern States in the rapid progress of _intensive_ high
farming.
It is evident that the methods of culture must vary according to
different conditions. In the vast prairies of North America, where
land could be _bought_ from 8s. to 40s. the acre, and where spaces
of from 100 to 150 square miles in one block could be given to wheat
culture, special methods of culture were applied and the results were
excellent. Land was bought--not rented. In the autumn, whole studs
of horses were brought, and the tilling and sowing were done with
the aid of formidable ploughs and sowing machines. Then the horses
were sent to graze in the mountains; the men were dismissed, and one
man, occasionally two or three, remained to winter on the farm. In
the spring the owners’ agents began to beat the inns for hundreds of
miles round, and engaged labourers and tramps, both freely supplied
by Europe, for the crop. Battalions of men were marched to the wheat
fields, and were camped there; the horses were brought from the
mountains, and in a week or two the crop was cut, thrashed, winnowed,
put in sacks, by specially invented machines, and sent to the next
elevator, or directly to the ships which carried it to Europe.
Whereupon the men were disbanded again, the horses were sent back to
the grazing grounds, or sold, and again only a couple of men remained
on the farm.
The crop from each acre was small, but the machinery was so
perfected that in this way 300 days of one man’s labour produced
from 200 to 300 quarters of wheat; in other words--the area of land
being of no account--every man produced in one day his yearly bread
food (eight and a half bushels of wheat); and taking into account
all subsequent labour, it was calculated that the work of 300 men in
one single day delivered to the consumer at Chicago the flour that
is required for the yearly food of 250 persons. Twelve hours and a
half of work are thus required in Chicago to supply one man with his
yearly provision of wheat-flour.
Under the special conditions offered in the Far West this certainly
was an appropriate method for increasing all of a sudden the wheat
supplies of mankind. It answered its purpose when large territories
of unoccupied land were opened to enterprise. But it could not
answer for ever. Under such a system of culture the soil was soon
exhausted, the crop declined, and _intensive_ agriculture (which
aims at high crops on a limited area) had soon to be resorted to.
Such was the case in Iowa in the year 1878. Up till then, Iowa was
an emporium for wheat-growing on the lines just indicated. But the
soil was already exhausted, and when a disease came the wheat plants
had no force to resist it. In a few weeks nearly all the wheat crop,
which was expected to beat all previous records, was lost; eight to
ten bushels per acre of bad wheat were all that could be cropped.
The result was that “mammoth farms” had to be broken up into small
farms, and that the Iowa farmers (after a terrible crisis of short
duration--everything is rapid in America) took to a more intensive
culture. Now, they are not behind France in wheat culture, as they
already grow an average of sixteen and a half bushels per acre on an
area of more than 2,000,000 acres, and they will soon win ground.
Somehow, with the aid of manure and improved methods of farming, they
compete admirably with the mammoth farms of the Far West.
In fact, over and over again it was pointed out, by Schaeffle,
Semler, Oetken, and many other writers, that the force of “American
competition” is not in its mammoth farms, but in the countless small
farms upon which wheat is grown in the same way as it is grown
in Europe--that is, with manuring--but with a better organised
production and facilities for sale, and without being compelled
to pay to the landlord a toll of one-third part, or more, of the
selling price of each quarter of wheat. However, it was only after
I had myself made a tour in the prairies of Manitoba in 1897, and
those of Ohio in 1901, that I could realise the full truth of
the just-mentioned views. The 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 bushels
of wheat, which are exported every year from Manitoba, are grown
almost entirely in farms of one or two “quarter-sections”--that is,
of 160 and 320 acres. The ploughing is made in the usual way, and
in an immense majority of cases the farmers buy the reaping and
binding machines (the “binders”) by associating in groups of four.
The thrashing machine is rented by the farmer for one or two days,
and the farmer carts his wheat to the elevator with his own horses,
either to sell it immediately, or to keep it at the elevator if he is
in no immediate need of money and hopes to get a higher price in one
month or two. In short, in Manitoba one is especially struck with the
fact that, even under a system of keen competition, the middle-size
farm has completely beaten the old mammoth farm, and that it is not
manufacturing wheat on a grand scale which pays best. It is also most
interesting to note that thousands and thousands of farmers produce
mountains of wheat in the Canadian province of Toronto and in the
Eastern States, although the land is not prairie-land at all, and the
farms are, as a rule, small.
The force of “American competition” is thus not in the possibility
of having hundreds of acres of wheat in one block. It lies in the
ownership of the land, in a system of culture which is appropriate
to the character of the country, in a widely developed spirit of
association, and, finally, in a number of institutions and customs
intended to lift the agriculturist and his profession to a high level
which is unknown in Europe.
In Europe we do not realise at all what is done in the States and
Canada in the interests of agriculture. In every American State, and
in every distinct region of Canada, there is an experimental farm,
and all the work of preliminary experiment upon new varieties of
wheat, oats, barley, fodder and fruit, which the farmer has mostly to
make himself in Europe, is made under the best scientific conditions
at the experimental farms, on a small scale first and on a large
scale next. The results of all these researches and experiments are
not merely rendered accessible to the farmer who would like to know
them, but they are brought to his knowledge, and, so to speak, are
forced upon his attention by every possible means. The “Bulletins” of
the experimental stations are distributed in hundreds of thousands
of copies; visits to the farms are organised in such a way that
thousands of farmers should inspect the stations every year, and be
shown by specialists the results obtained, either with new varieties
of plants or under various new methods of treatment. Correspondence
is carried on with the farmers on such a scale that, for instance,
at Ottawa, the experimental farm sends out every year a hundred
thousand letters and packets. Every farmer can get, free of charge
and postage, five pounds of seed of any variety of cereals, out of
which he can get next year the necessary seed for sowing several
acres. And, finally, in every small and remote township there are
held farmers’ meetings, at which special lecturers, who are sent
out by the experimental farms or the local agricultural societies,
discuss with the farmers in an informal way the results of last
year’s experiments and discoveries relative to every branch of
agriculture, horticulture, cattle-breeding, dairying and agricultural
co-operation.[69]
American agriculture really offers an imposing sight--not in the
wheat fields of the Far West, which soon will become a thing of
the past, but in the development of rational agriculture and the
forces which promote it. Read the description of an agricultural
exhibition, “the State’s fair,” in some small town of Iowa, with
its 70,000 farmers camping with their families in tents during the
fair’s week, studying, learning, buying, and selling, and enjoying
life. You see a _national_ fête, and you feel that you deal with a
nation in which agriculture is in respect. Or read the publications
of the scores of experimental stations, whose reports are distributed
broadcast over the country, and are read by the farmers and discussed
at countless “farmers’ meetings.” Consult the “Transactions” and
“Bulletins” of the countless agricultural societies, not royal but
popular; study the grand enterprises for irrigation; and you will
feel that American agriculture is a real force, imbued with life,
which no longer fears mammoth farms, and needs not to cry like a
child for protection.
“Intensive” agriculture and gardening are already by this time as
much a feature of the treatment of the soil in America as they are
in Belgium. As far back as the year 1880, nine States, among which
were Georgia, Virginia and the two Carolinas, bought £5,750,000
worth of artificial manure; and we are told that by this time the
use of artificial manure has immensely spread towards the West. In
Iowa, where mammoth farms used to exist twenty years ago, sown grass
is already in use, and it is highly recommended by both the Iowa
Agricultural Institute and the numerous local agricultural papers;
while at the agricultural competitions the highest rewards are given,
not for extensive farming, but for high crops on small areas. Thus,
at a recent competition in which hundreds of farmers took part, the
first ten prizes were awarded to ten farmers who had grown, on three
acres each, from 262 to 346¾ bushels of Indian corn, in other words
_from 87 to 115 bushels to the acre_. This shows where the ambition
of the Iowa farmer goes. In Minnesota, prizes were given already for
crops of 300 to 1,120 bushels of potatoes to the acre--that is, from
eight and a quarter to thirty-one tons to the acre--while the average
potato crop in Great Britain is only six tons.
At the same time market-gardening is immensely extending in America.
In the market-gardens of Florida we see such crops as 445 to 600
bushels of onions per acre, 400 bushels of tomatoes, 700 bushels of
sweet potatoes, which testify to a high development of culture. As
to the “truck farms” (market-gardening for export by steamer and
rail), they covered, in 1892, 400,000 acres, and the fruit farms in
the suburbs of Norfolk, in Virginia, were described by Prof. Ch.
Baltet[70] as real _models_ of that sort of culture--a very high
testimony in the mouth of a French gardener who himself comes from
the model _marais_ of Troyes.
And while people in London continue to pay almost all the year
round twopence for a lettuce (very often imported from Paris), they
have at Chicago and Boston those unique establishments in the world
where lettuces are grown in immense greenhouses with the aid of
electric light; and we must not forget that although the discovery of
“electric” growth is European (it is due to Siemens), it was at the
Cornell University that it was proved by a series of experiments that
electric light is an admirable aid for forwarding the growth of the
_green_ parts of the plant.
In short, America, which formerly took the lead in bringing
“extensive” agriculture to perfection, now takes the lead in
“intensive,” or forced, agriculture as well. In this adaptability
lies the real force of American competition.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] I leave these lines on purpose as they were written for the
first edition of this book.
[35] Twenty-three per cent. of the total area of England, 40 per
cent. in Wales, and 75 per cent. in Scotland are now under wood,
coppice, mountain heath, water, etc. The remainder--that is,
32,777,513 acres--which were under culture and permanent pasture
in the year 1890 (only 32,094,658 in 1911), may be taken as the
“cultivable” area of Great Britain.
[36] Average area under wheat in 1853-1860, 4,092,160 acres; average
crop, 14,310,779 quarters. Average area under wheat in 1884-1887,
2,509,055 acres; average crop (good years), 9,198,956 quarters.
See Professor W. Fream’s _Rothamstead Experiments_ (London, 1888),
page 83. I take in the above Sir John Lawes’ figure of 5·65 bushels
per head of population every year. It is very close to the yearly
allowance of 5·67 bushels of the French statisticians. The Russian
statisticians reckon 5·67 bushels of winter crops (chiefly rye) and
2·5 bushels of spring crops (sarrazin, barley, etc.).
[37] There was an increase of 1,800,000 head of horned cattle, and
a decrease of 4¼ million sheep (6⅔ millions, if we compare the year
1886 with 1868), which would correspond to an increase of 1¼ million
of units of cattle, because eight sheep are reckoned as equivalent
to one head of horned cattle. But five million acres having been
reclaimed upon waste land since 1860, the above increase should
hardly do for covering that area, so that the 2¼ million acres which
were cultivated no longer remained fully uncovered. They were a pure
loss to the nation.
[38] According to a report read by Mr. Crawford before the
Statistical Society in October, 1899, Britain imports every year
4,500,000 tons of hay and other food for its cattle and horses. Under
the present system of culture, 6,000,000 acres could produce these
food-stuffs. If another 6,000,000 acres were sown with cereals, all
the wheat required for the United Kingdom could have been produced at
home with the methods of culture now in use.
[39] No less than 5,877,000 cwts. of beef and mutton, 1,065,470 sheep
and lambs, and 415,565 pieces of cattle were imported in 1895. In
1910 the first of these figures rose to 13,690,000 cwts. Altogether,
it is calculated (_Statesman’s Year-book_, 1912) that, in 1910,
21 lb. of imported beef, 13½ lb. of imported mutton, and 7 lb. of
other sorts of meat, per head of population, were retained for home
consumption; in addition to 11 lb. of butter, 262 lb. of wheat, 25
lb. of flour, and 20 lb. of rice and rice-flour, imported.
[40] Agricultural population (farmers and labourers) in England and
Wales: 2,100,000 in 1861; 1,383,000 in 1884; 1,311,720 in 1891;
1,152,500 (including fishing population) in 1901.
[41] Round the small hamlet where I stayed for two summers, there
were: One farm, 370 acres, four labourers and two boys; another,
about 300 acres, two men and two boys; a third, 800 acres, five men
only and probably as many boys. In truth, the problem of cultivating
the land with the least number of men has been solved in this spot
by not cultivating at all as much as two-thirds of it. Since these
lines were written, in 1890, a movement in favour of intensive
market-gardening has begun in this country, and I read in November,
1909, that they were selling at the Covent Garden market asparagus
that had been grown in South Devon in November. They begin also to
grow early potatoes in Cornwall and Devon. Formerly, nobody thought
of utilising this rich soil and warm climate for growing early
vegetables.
[42] _Land Problems and National Welfare_, London, 1911.
[43] _Rural England_, two big volumes, London, 1902.
[44] See H. Rider Haggard’s _Rural Denmark and its Lessons_, London,
1911, pp. 188-212.
[45] The _Rothamstead Experiments_, 1888, by Professor W. Fream, p.
35 _seq._ It is well worth noting that Mr. Hall, who was the head
of Rothamstead for many years, maintained from his own experience
that growing wheat in England is more profitable than rearing live
stock. The same opinion was often expressed by the experts whose
testimonies are reproduced by Rider Haggard. In many places of his
_Rural England_ one finds also a mention of high wheat crops, up to
fifty-six bushels per acre, obtained in many places in this country.
[46] The figures which I take for these calculations are given in
_Agricultural Returns of the Board of Agriculture and Agricultural
Statistics for 1911_, vol xlvi., pt. 1. They are as follows for the
year 1910:--
Acres.
Total area (Great Britain) 56,803,000
Uncultivable area 24,657,070
(23,680,000 in 1895)
Cultivable area 32,145,930
Out of it, under the plough 14,668,890
Out of it, under permanent pasture 17,477,040
(During the last ten years, since the census of 1901, the cultivable
area decreased by 323,000 acres, while the urban area increased by
166,710 acres, thus reaching now 4,015,700 acres. Since 1901, 942,000
acres were withdrawn from the plough, 661,000 acres in England,
158,000 in Wales, and 123,000 in Scotland.)
The distribution of the area which is actually under the plough
between the various crops varies considerably from year to year.
Taking 1910 (an average year) we have the following:--
Acres.
Corn crops 7,045,530
Clover and mature grasses 4,157,040
Green crops and orchards 2,994,890
Hops 32,890
Small fruit 84,310
Flax 230
Bare fallow, etc. 354,000
Total under culture (including that
part of permanent pasture which
gives hay) 14,668,890
(In 1901 15,610,890)
(In 1895 16,166,950)
Out of the 7,045,530 acres given to corn crops, 1,808,850 acres were
under wheat (nearly 200,000 acres less than in 1899 and 100,000 acres
less than in 1911), 1,728,680 acres under barley (only 1,597,930 in
1911), 3,020,970 acres under oats, about 300,000 under beans, and
about 52,000 acres under rye and buckwheat. From 540,000 to 570,000
acres were given to potatoes. The area under clover and sown grasses
is steadily declining since 1898, when it was 4,911,000 acres.
[47] Only from each 52 acres, out of 308 acres, hay is obtained. The
remainder are grazing grounds.
[48] That is, thirty to thirty-three bushels on the average; forty
bushels in good farms, and fifty in the best. The area under
wheat was 16,700,000 acres in 1910, all chief corn crops covering
33,947,000 acres; the cultivated area is 90,300,000 acres, and
the aggregate superficies of France, 130,800,000 acres. About
agriculture in France, see Lecouteux, _Le blé, sa culture extensive
et intensive_, 1883; Risler, _Physiologie et culture du blé_, 1886;
Boitet, _Herbages et prairies naturelles_, 1885; Baudrillart,
_Les populations agricoles de la Normandie_, 1880; Grandeau,
_La production agricole en France_, and _L’agriculture et les
institutions agricoles du monde au commencement du vingtième siècle_;
P. Compain, _Prairies et paturages_; A. Clément, _Agriculture
moderne_, 1906; Augé Laribé, _L’évolution de la France agricole_,
1912; Léonce de Lavergne’s last edition; and so on.
[49] The exports from France in 1910 (average year) attained: Wine,
222,804,000 fr.; spirits, 54,000,000 fr.; cheese, butter and sugar,
114,000,000 fr. To this country France sent, same year, £2,163,200
worth of wine, £1,013,200 worth of refined sugar, £2,116,000 worth
of butter, and £400,000 worth of eggs, all of French origin only, in
addition to £12,206,700 worth of manufactured silks, woollens, and
cottons. The exports from Algeria are not taken in the above figures.
[50] Each 1,000 acres of French territory are disposed of as follows:
379 acres are under woods and coppices (176), buildings, communal
grazing grounds, mountains, etc., and 621 acres are considered as
“cultivable.” Out of the latter, 130 are under meadows, now irrigated
to a great extent, 257 acres under cereals (124 under wheat, and 26
under wheat mixed with rye), 33 under vineyards, 83 under orchards,
green crops, and various industrial cultures, and the remainder is
chiefly under permanent pasture or bare fallow. As to cattle, we
find in Great Britain, in 1910, which was an average year, 7,037,330
head of cattle (including in that number about 1,400,000 calves
under one year), which makes _twenty-two head_ per each 100 acres
of the cultivable area, and 27,103,000 sheep--that is, _eighty-four
sheep_ per each 100 acres of the same area. In France we find, in
the same year, 14,297,570 cattle (_nineteen_ head per each 100 acres
of cultivable area), and only 17,357,640 sheep (_twenty-one_ sheep
per 100 acres of the same). In other words, the proportion of horned
cattle is nearly the same in both countries (twenty-two head and
nineteen head per 100 acres), a considerable difference appearing in
favour of this country only as to the number of sheep (eighty-four
as against twenty-one). The heavy imports of hay, oil-cake, oats,
etc., into this country must, however, not be forgotten, because,
for each head of cattle which lives on imported food, eight sheep
can be grazed, or be fed with home-grown fodder. As to horses, both
countries stand on nearly the same footing.
[51] Out of each 1000 acres of territory, 673 are cultivated, and
327 are left as uncultivable, and part of them are now used for
afforestation. Out of the 673 cultivated acres, 273 are given to
cereals, out of which 61 are under pure wheat, 114 under _méteil_ (a
mixture of ⅔ of wheat and ⅓ of rye) and pure rye, and 98 under other
cereals; 18 to potatoes, 45 to roots and fodder, and 281 to various
industrial cultures (beet for sugar, oleaginous grains, etc.); 27 are
under gardens, kitchen gardens and parks, 177 under woods, and 57 are
cultivated periodically. On the other hand, each 65 acres out of 1000
give catch-crops of carrots, mangolds, etc.
[52] _Annuaire Statistique de la Belgique pour_ 1910, Bruxelles,
1911. In Mr. Seebohm Rowntree’s admirable work, _Land and Labour:
Lessons from Belgium_, published 1910 (London, Macmillan), the reader
will find all concerning Belgian agriculture dealt with in detail on
the basis of the author’s personal scrupulous inquiries on the spot,
and all available statistical information.
[53] _Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium_, pp. 178, 179.
[54] Taking all horses, cattle and sheep in both countries, and
reckoning eight sheep as equivalent to one head of horned cattle, we
find that Belgium has _twenty-four_ cattle units and horses upon each
100 acres of territory, as against _twenty_ same units and horses in
Great Britain. If we take cattle alone, the disproportion is much
greater, as we find _thirty-six_ cattle units on each 100 acres of
cultivable area, as against _nineteen_ in Great Britain. The annual
value of animal produce in Belgium is estimated by the _Annuaire
Statistique de la Belgique_ (1910, p. 302) at £66,040,000, including
milk (£4,000,000), poultry (£1,600,000), and eggs (£1,400,000).
[55] I take these lines from a letter which the Rural Office of the
Belgian Ministry of Agriculture had been kind enough to write to me
on January 28, 1910, in reply to some questions which I had addressed
to that Office in order to explain the striking oscillations of the
Belgian exports between the years 1870 and 1880. A Belgian friend,
having kindly taken new information upon this point, had the same
opinion confirmed from another official source.
[56] If we take the figures of imports and exports, which I also
owe to the Belgian Rural Office, we find that the _net_ imports
of wheat, rye, and wheat mixed with rye (_méteil_) reached 3,011
million lb. in 1907 (3,374 million in 1910), which would give 429 lb.
_per capita_ for a population of 7,000,000 inhabitants. But if this
amount be added to the local production of the same cereals, which
reached the same year 2,426 million lb., we arrive at the figure of
776 lb. per head of population. But such a figure is much too high,
because the annual _per capita_ consumption _of both the winter
and the spring cereals_ is generally estimated to be 502 lb. There
must be, therefore, either an error in the weight of the imports,
which is improbable, or the figures of re-exported cereals are not
complete. Let me add that in France the average annual consumption
_per capita_ of _all_ cereals, including oats, has been in the
course of twenty-nine years (1880-1908) 525 lb., which confirms the
above-mentioned figure. And in France people eat as much bread as in
Belgium.
[57] See Appendix K.
[58] Assuming that 9,000 lb. of dry hay are necessary for keeping one
head of horned cattle every year, the following figures (taken from
Toubeau’s _Répartition métrique des impôts_) will show what we obtain
now under usual and under intensive culture:--
+-----------------------+--------------+-------------+----------+
| | | |Number of |
| |Crop per acre.|Equivalent in|cattle fed|
| | Eng. lb. | dry hay. |from each |
| | | Eng. lb. |100 acres.|
+-----------------------+--------------+-------------+----------+
| Pasture | -- | 1,200 | 13 |
| Unirrigated meadows | -- | 2,400 | 26 |
| Clover, cut twice | -- | 4,800 | 52 |
| Swedish turnips | 38,500 | 10,000 | 108 |
| Rye-grass | 64,000 | 18,000 | 180 |
| Beet, high farming | 64,000 | 21,000 | 210 |
| Indian corn, ensilage | 120,000 | 30,000 | 330 |
+-----------------------+--------------+-------------+----------+
[59] I saw thermosiphons used by the market-gardeners at Worthing.
They said that they found them quite satisfactory. As to the cost
of heating the soil, let me mention the experiments of H. Mehner,
described in _Gartenflora_, fascicules 16 and 17 of the year
1906. He considers the cost quite small, in comparison with the
increased value of the crops. With £100 per _Morgen_, spent for the
installation, and £10 every spring for heating, the author estimates
the increase in the value of crops (earlier vegetables) at £100 every
year. (Report to the German _Landwirthschafts Gesellschaft_, 1906.)
[60] “Portable soil” is not the latest departure in agriculture. The
last one is the watering of the soil with special liquids containing
special microbes. It is a fact that chemical manures, without organic
manure, seldom prove to be sufficient. On the other hand, it was
discovered lately that certain microbes in the soil are a necessary
condition for the growth of plants. Hence the idea of _sowing_ the
beneficent microbes, which rapidly develop in the soil and fertilise
it. We certainly shall soon hear more of this new method, which is
experimented upon on a large scale in Germany, in order to transform
peat-bogs and heavy soils into rich meadows and fields.
[61] Ponce, _La culture maraîchère_, 1869; Gressent, _Le potager
moderne_, 7th edition in 1886; Courtois-Gérard, _Manuel pratique
de culture maraîchère_, 1863; L. G. Gillekens, _Cours pratique
de culture maraîchère_, Bruxelles, 1895; Vilmorin, _Le bon
jardinier_ (almanac). The general reader who cares to know about
the productivity of the soil will find plenty of examples, well
classified, in the most interesting work _La Répartition métrique des
impôts_, by A. Toubeau, 2 vols., 1880. I do not quote many excellent
English manuals, but I must remark that the market-gardening culture
in this country has also obtained results very highly prized by the
Continental gardeners, and that the chief reproach to be addressed
to it is its relatively small extension. French market-gardening
having been lately introduced into England, several manuals have been
published for that purpose. The little work, _French Gardening_, by
Thomas Smith, London (Utopia Press), 1909, deserves special mention,
as it contains the results of one year’s observation of the work
of a French gardener, specially invited to England by Mr. Joseph
Fels, and gives (with illustrations) a mass of practical indications
and numerical data as to the cost and the value of the produce.
A subsequent work of the same author, _The Profitable Culture of
Vegetables for Market Gardeners, Small Holders, and Others_, London
(Longmans, Green), 1911, deals in detail with the ordinary culture of
vegetables and the intensive culture of the French gardeners.
[62] _Manuel pratique de culture maraîchère_, by Courtois-Gérard, 4th
edit., 1868.
[63] Already it is partly removed in France and Belgium, owing to the
public laboratories where analyses of seeds and manure are made free.
The falsifications discovered by these laboratories exceed all that
could have been imagined. Manures, containing only one-fifth part of
the nutritious elements they were supposed to contain, were found to
be quite common; while manures containing injurious matters, and no
nutritious parts whatever, were not unfrequently supplied by firms of
“respectable” repute. With seeds, things stand even worse. Samples
of grass seeds which contained 20 per cent. of injurious grasses, or
20 per cent. of grains of sand, so coloured as to deceive the buyer,
or even 10 per cent. of a deadly poisonous grass, passed through the
Ghent laboratory.
[64] During the winter of 1890 a friend of mine, who lived in a
London suburb, used to get his butter from Bavaria _per parcel post_.
It cost him 10s. the eleven pounds in Bavaria, parcel post inclusive
(2s. 2d.), 6d. for the money order, and 2½d. the letter; total, less
than 11s. Butter of an inferior quality (out of comparison), with 10
to 15 per cent. of water inclusive, was sold in London at 1s. 6d. the
lb. at the same time.
[65] The data for the calculation of the cost of production of wheat
in this country are those given by the _Mark Lane Express_; they
will be found in a digestible form in an article on wheat-growing in
the _Quarterly Review_ for April, 1887, and in W. E. Bear’s book,
_The British Farmer and his Competitors_, London (Cassell), 1888.
Although they are a little above the average, the crop taken for
the calculations is also above the average. A similar inquiry has
been made on a large scale by the Russian Provincial Assemblies,
and the whole was summed up in an elaborate paper, in the _Vyestnik
Promyshlennosti_, No. 49, 1887. To compare the paper kopecks with
pence I took the rouble at 63/100 of its nominal value: such was its
average quotation during the year 1886. I took 475 English lb. in the
quarter of wheat.
[66] The rents have declined since 1887, but the prices of wheat also
went down. It must not be forgotten that as the best acres only are
selected for wheat-growing, the rent for each acre upon which wheat
is grown must be taken higher than the average rent per acre in a
farm of from 200 to 300 acres.
[67] L. de Lavergne pointed out as far back as fifty years ago that
the States were at that time the chief importers of guano. Already in
1854 they imported it almost to the same amount as this country, and
they had, moreover, sixty-two manufactories of guano which supplied
it to the amount of sixteen times the imports. Compare also Ronna’s
_L’agriculture aux Etats Unis_, 1881; Lecouteux, _Le blé_; and J. R.
Dodge’s _Annual Report of the American Department of Agriculture_ for
1885 and 1886. Schaeffle’s work was also summed up in Schmoller’s
_Jahrbuch_.
[68] See also J. R. Dodge’s _Farm and Factory_, New York, 1884.
[69] Some additional information on this subject will be found in the
articles of mine: “Some Resources of Canada,” and “Recent Science,”
in the _Nineteenth Century_, January, 1898, and October, 1897. I see
from the _Experimented Farms’ Reports_ for 1909 that on the average
38,000 samples of seeds are sent in this way to the farmers every
year; in 1909 more than 38,000 farmers united in experiments as to
the relative merits of the different sorts of wheat, oats, and barley
under trial. I think that my friend, Dr. William Saunders, is quite
right in saying that this system of supplying a great number of
farmers with small quantities of choice seeds has contributed notably
to increase the yield of corn in Canada.
[70] _L’Horticulture dans les cinq Parties du Monde._ Paris, 1895.