60 

 THIRD SESSION. 



THE PLACE OF AGRICULTURE IN 

 INDUSTRY. 



By Mr. C. S. ORWIN 



(Director of the Institute for Research in Agricultural Economics, 

 University of Oxford). 



For some years before the great war the feeling was growing among 

 the urban population of England that all was not well with our country- 

 side, and this feeling may be said to have materialised for the first 

 time in a constructive form during the Land Campaign of the present 

 Prime Minister in 1909. It is not necessary to dwell upon the causes 

 which led to the decline of British agriculture. In the main they are 

 the outcome of a belief in the continuance of a condition of peace 

 among the greater nations of the world, a belief which grew in strength 

 year by year since last we were at war with our neighbours, and in 

 proportion as the bonds by which the workers of all nations are united 

 appeared every year to be drawn tighter. While peace lasted, and-the 

 sea routes remained open, we could safely depend upon receiving the 

 half of our food supplies from abroad. 



With the war it has been brought home to us, with a force that 

 nothing but war could have given, that upon the freedom of these 

 sea-routes depends our very existence. We have realised for the first 

 time how the application of science to methods of destruction might, 

 in certain conditions, bring us to serious want if not to actual starvation. 

 Now that our belief in a condition of unbroken peace has been shattered, 

 we are bound to consider the question whether our national policy 

 will not have to be re-shaped upon a different foundation ; and among 

 the many after-war problems, nothing of greater importance than the 

 reconstruction of rural life could occupy the public mind. 



The only alternative policy to that of depending upon foreign 

 countries for one-half of our food supplies is that we should grow 

 enough food ourselves to make us independent in a crisis. Whether 

 these islands could produce enough food to maintain the whole 

 population under normal conditions is doubtful ; but it is confidently 

 asserted by those who have examined the problem that under a system 

 of extended tillage we should have no difficulty in keeping the people 

 of the country in a condition of reasonable health and efficiency even 

 in the face of a complete blockade. Agriculture is not an industry 

 in which changes can quickly be introduced. It took the Germans 

 a generation to organise their farming so that they should be practically 

 self-supporting in war-time even with a rapidly increasing population, 

 and it will be years before we can get within measurable distance 

 of the same position, even if we set to work for that end at once. But 



