AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS IN THE TROPICS 57 



It is perfectly useless to supply a plant with large quantities ot 

 food and expect it to grow, unless at the same time it be given 

 plenty of water and kept at a sufficiently high temperature ; 

 it is equally useless to expect agricultural progress to go on, if 

 the country be supplied, say, with admirable means of transport 

 but no capital be forthcoming. 



The factors in agricultural progress are many, but they come 

 into operation at different periods in that progress, as we have 

 indicated in the foregoing historical sketch. But once a factor 

 has come into operation, it must continue to work, or agriculture 

 will again fall back. 



Now, in the countries of the north most of the earlier factors — 

 land, capital, transport, labour, education — have come into full 

 work so long ago, and have been acting for so long a time, 

 that most people take their action for granted and look only 

 at the effect of the later factors ; whereas in the tropics the 

 early factors have not yet produced their full effect, if indeed 

 they are always all in operation. Many of the enthusiasts who 

 have had to do v/ith tropical agriculture have tried to bring 

 the later factors, which are operative in Europe, into action 

 in the tropics before the primary factors, or have taken one of 

 these alone and tried to make it active without the aid of the 

 others. 



In the sketch of the history of agriculture with which we 

 began, we have tried to make clear what are these factors in 

 progress, and the order in which they come into operation. 

 They are land and its availability, capital, transport, labour and 

 to some extent education. It is very important to understand 

 that these must all come into operation before there can be any 

 result from what we may call the scientific factors of progress, 

 the scientific improvement of crops, cattle, tools, methods and 

 the rest. For the latter factors there is an unlimited field 

 open but the way must first be cleared by the operation of the 

 preliminary factors, as we may call them. In Agriculture in 

 the Tropics we have called these preliminary factors A, the 

 scientific factors B, and shown that all A must operate before 

 B can begin. It is not intended to imply that the preliminary 

 factors are not scientific or that no science comes in among 

 them, for indeed it does. Under land and its availability there 

 comes in what until recently was the only application of science 

 in tropical agriculture — the introduction and acclimatisation 



