THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



457 



ARTIFICIAL FOOD. 



BY CUTHBEBT W. JOHNSON, ESQ., E.R.S. 



I have on another occasion endeavoured to show 

 the approximate consumption of meat in our 

 country at this time, and also at the commence- 

 ment of the present century (Farmers' Almanac, 

 for 1859). These kind of inquiries will be deemed 

 useful by my readers in several ways ; they not 

 only serve to show the progress made in the con- 

 sumption of meat, but they clearly prove the enor- 

 mous advances made by the skill and energy of 

 our agriculturists in the supply of that long and 

 still rapidly enlarging demand. 



If, indeed, it is a correct estimate that the aver- 

 age consumption of meat in Great Britain is equal 

 to about 75lbs. per head, then it would appear that 

 as the population of our island was 11,000,000 

 in 1801, and about 22,000,000 in 1859 — that 

 855,000,000 lbs. of meat were consumed in 1801, 

 and double that quantity, or 1,710,000,000 lbs., 

 in 1859. Now as to this increased demand of 

 855,000,000 lbs. in 58 years, hdw was that satis- 

 fied ? where did the supply come from, but from 

 the broad lands of Britain ? It is useless to think 

 of foreign Uve stock. Here the English farmer is, 

 fortunately for himself and for his country too, not 

 subject to a ruinous competition. To what does 

 all the foreign supply of meat amount ? Take the 

 sheep and lambs imported, for instance, in the 

 years 1856 and 1857, from the two last official 

 returns : why they amounted to 145,059 in 1856, 

 and to 177,207 in 1857, being an average yearly 

 import of lGl,133 sheep and lambs. Even allow- 

 ing these to average 100 lbs. each, here was a 

 supply of 16,113,300 lbs. of mutton, which would, 

 at 75 lbs. a-head, only be sufficient for the annual 

 consumption of 214,844 persons. If you add to 

 this the cattle, the pigs, the beef, the bacon, &c., 

 imported, you hardly have a supply of animal food 

 equal to the yearly demand of 1,000,000 persons ; 

 the remaining 21,000,000 Britons are to solely rely 

 (and that demand has been right nobly responded 

 to) on the steadily increasing efforts of the culti- 

 vators of our island. 



If we contrast the smallness of the supply of 

 foreign meat with that of the imports of foreign 

 corn, how widely different is the result we obtain ! 

 If we allow a quarter of wheat to represent the 

 average annual consumption of each individual, 

 then in the year 1857 there was imported into this 

 country in only foreign wheat, meal, and flour, 

 bread for a year's support of 4,006,285 persons, 

 more by 3,000,000 persons than the imported 



animal food could supply. With these facts in 

 our possession, need we ask why meat maintains 

 a remunerative price, whilst bread is selling below 

 the cost of its production ? 



Such facts lead us also to another practical and 

 useful portion of the inquiry — the means of pro- 

 moting the production of meat; of still farther 

 enlarging this, the most profitable and the most 

 safe branch of the farmer's business— the only 

 agricultural product, in fact, that is likely to long 

 continue to be in increasing demand, without en- 

 countering a corresponding foreign competition. 



There have been even within the last few weeks 

 two or three valuable papers published, giving the 

 results of valuable experiments in the production 

 of food for stock and its consumption, well worthy 

 of our careful consideration. The comparative 

 value of swedes and cabbages (a crop which I 

 think has never yet been cultivated to the extent 

 to which in many districts it is capable) has been 

 tried in some carefully-conducted experiments of 

 Mr. J. M'Laren, of Rossie Priory {Trans. High. 

 Soo., 1858, p, 373). In his prize report, after de- 

 scribing his mode of cultivating the cabbages, and 

 the weight per acre (cabbages 42 tons 14 cwt., 

 swedes 26 tons 12 cwt.), he thus describes the 

 result of his trials with two lots of Leicester sheep 

 (10 in each lot): "On the 1st December, 1855, 

 both lots were put into a field of well-sheltered old 

 lea, having a division between them. All the food 

 was cut, and given them in troughs three times a 

 day. They also had a constant supply of hay in 

 racks. At the end of the trial, on the 1st of March, 

 1856, the sheep were all re-weighed, sent to the 

 Edinburgh market, and sold on the same day. As 

 I had no opportunity of getting the dead weights, 

 I requested the salesman, Mr. Swan, to give his 

 opinion on their respective qualities. This was to 

 the effect that no difference existed in their market 

 value, but that the sheep fed on turnips would turn 

 out the best quality of mutton with most profit to 

 the butcher. Both lots were sold at the same 

 price, viz., 52s. 6d. During the three months of 

 trial, we found that each lot consumed about the 

 same weight of food, viz., 8 tons 13 cwt. 47 lbs. of 

 cabbage, being at the rate of 21g lbs. per day for 

 each sheep; and 8 tons 10 cwt. 7 lbs. of swedes, 

 being at the rate of 20jj lbs. per day," 



It will be seen, by referring to the subjoined 

 table, that in this trial the swede has proved of 

 higher value for feeding purposes than the cabbage, 



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