1918] on Food Production and English Land 288 



going to have from three-quarters to a million more acres of wheat 

 in England and Wales than the 2h million we had last year, and more 

 than two million acres of permanent grass land have been ploughed up 

 for this year's cropping, a recovery of two-thirds of the arable land 

 that has been lost since 1872. To this we must add that a good deal 

 of the temporary grass which occupies part of the arable land has 

 this year been replaced by food crops, so that with the additions that 

 Scotland and Ireland have been able to make there will probably be 

 as much land under food crops this year in the United Kingdom 

 as there was in the seventies. You will understand I am speaking 

 approximately and on estimates, for the exact returns have not yet 

 been collected. It is a great performance ; if I say that twice as 

 much has been done as Lord Milner's Committee silting in 1914 

 thought was possible within the period, and that estimate was 

 regarded as over sanguine, I perhaps give you an idea of the magni- 

 tude of the task. 



But we are here to think of the future as well as of the 

 present. I have said enough I hope to convince you that Britain 

 must have a strong agriculture, must use her land to produce food, if 

 she is to be safe as a nation in future. How are we to ensure that ? 

 I do not contemplate that we should become self-supporting in 

 the matter of food. I do not even wish us to grow all our own 

 wheat. When war is over we shall revert to our old standards of 

 profit, and men will produce meat or milk, asparagus or fruit, as pays 

 them best. But we must have more arable land, another six or eight 

 million acres, and we must have more. men engaged upon the land, 

 so that when the crisis comes, as it may come again, we can throw 

 all our acres into the production of essential food, enough to support 

 us through the years of trial. AVith this easily possible amoi^nt of 

 arable land we could be self-supporting for several years if we ate 

 up our stocks of cattle, sheep and pigs, and used our land to an ever- 

 increasing extent for the production of human food only. Our policy 

 then must be directed towards more arable land, more men engaged 

 in cultivation, greater responsibihty for the user of land. 



We have taken the first steps in that direction by the Corn Pro- 

 duction Bill of last year. We cannot hope that men will adventure 

 on the risk of arable farming unless they are free from the danger of 

 the disaster that overtook the last generation of farmers. Hence the 

 guaranteed prices of the Corn Production Bill ; the State will pay a 

 bonus on the production of wheat and oats if the world prices fall 

 below a certain level. It is an insurance that the State deliberately 

 enters into in order to make sure that the arable land is maintained. 



Nor will men stop on the land unless their living is guaranteed. 

 Before the w^ar the agricultural labourer only stopped upon the land 

 because he was too depressed to look for any better paid employment; 

 as far as they were capable the younger ones were not staying. The 

 Corn Production Act entails a minimum wa^e. Mr. Prothero v\as 



