1918] Food Production and English Land 277 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, April 26, 1918. 



The Hon. Richaed Clere Paesonh, M.Inst.C.E., 

 Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Sir a. Daniel Hall, K.C.B. F.R.S., Permanent Secretary, 

 Board of Agriculture. 



Food Production and English Land. 



The war has given us a new anxiety about our food supplies and a 

 new interest in British agriculture as the only source of food if the 

 work of the enemy submarines, a form of blockade that had never 

 been contemplated, attains its aim even partially. 



To understand our position with regard to food production to-day 

 we must go back to the history of British agriculture for at least 

 forty years. Half a century ago British agriculture was easily pre- 

 eminent, whether as regards its production from the soil, the excellence 

 of its live-stock, or the organisation which was put into the manage- 

 ment of the land. Then in the late seventies the great simultaneous 

 development of the new lands of America and of ocean shipping 

 coincided with a run of bad seasons at home and a steady apprecia- 

 tion of the gold standard. From all these causes combined prices of 

 agricultural produce fell, and continued to fall all through the eighties 

 and well into the nineties, until by 1894-5, the lowest point, farmers 

 were ruined wholesale. If they survived they saw their capital reduced 

 to the lowest ebb ; landowners found their income from land down 

 to the vanishing point, and could neither sell nor let, for all confidence 

 in farming as a business had disappeared. From 1895 prices began 

 to turn and continued to improve up to the date of the war, for a 

 year or two before which farming had become a reasonably prosperous 

 industry, and land was again in demand, though new capital was still 

 to seek, so thoroughly had public confidence in agriculture been 

 destroyed by the course of events within everyone's memory. Farming 

 had revived, but viewed at large it was a system that attained only a 

 low average of production, low utilisation of capital and low rents. 

 As there were plenty of rich men in the country land was in demand 

 for its amenities, but not as an income-producing investment. 



What had happened during that period ? How had men read- 

 justed their business to the new conditions ? Some by altering the 

 character of their production, by growing materials that escaped from 

 the full brunt of foreign competition, milk instead of corn ; but in 

 the main men had reduced their expenditure, cheapened their methods. 

 Vol. XXII. (No. 112) u 



