October 28, 1920] 



NATURE 



293 



Intensive Cultivation.* 

 By Prof. Frederick Keeble, C.B.E., Sc.D., F.R.S. 



I PROPOSE to devote my address entirely to horti- 

 culture — to speak of its performance during the 

 war and of its immediate prospects. Although that 

 which intensive cultivators accomplished during the 

 war is small in comparison with the great work per- 

 formed by British agriculturists, nevertheless it is 

 in itself by no means inconsiderable, and is, more- 

 over, significant, and deserves a brief record. Thiit 

 work may have turned, and probably did turn, the 

 scale between scarcity and suHiciency ; for, as I am 

 informed, a difference' of lo per cent, in food supplies 

 is enough to convert plenty into dearth. Seen from 

 this point of view, the war-work accomplished by the 

 professional horticulturist — the nurseryman, the florist, 

 the glasshouse cultivator, the fruit-grower and market 

 gardener — and by the professional and amateur gar- 

 dener and allotment holder assumes a real import- 

 ance, albeit the sum total of the acres they cul- 

 tivated is but a fraction of the land which agricul- 

 turists put under the plough. As a set-off against the 

 relative smallness of the acreage brought under interi- 

 sive cultivation for food purposes during the war, it 

 is to be remembered that the yields per acre obtained 

 by intensive cultivators are remarkably high. 



The reduction of the acreage under soft fruits — 

 strawberries, raspberries, currants, and gooseberries — 

 which took place during the war gives some measure 

 of the sacrifices — partly voluntary, partly involuntary 

 — made bv fruit-growers to the cause of war-food pro- 

 duction. The total area under soft fruits was 55,560 

 acres in 1913, by 1918 it had become 42,415 — a de- 

 crease of 13,145 acres, or about 24 per cent. But 

 though the public lost in one direction it gained in 

 another, and the reduction of the soft-fruit acreage 

 meant— reckoned in terms of potatoes — an augmenta- 

 tion of supplies to the extent of more than 100,000 

 tons. Equally notable was the contribution to food 

 orodurtion made by the florists and nurserymen in 

 response to our appeals. An indication of their effort 

 is supplied by figures which, as president of the 

 British F'lorists' Federation, Mr. George Munro — 

 whose invaluable work for food production deserves 

 public recognition — caused to be collected. Thev relate 

 to the amount of food production undertaken by 

 100 leading florists and nurserymen. These men put 

 1075 acres, out of a total of 1775 acres used previously 

 for flower-growing, to the purpose of food production, 

 .-md they put 142 acres of glass out of a total^ of 

 218 acres to like use. I compute that tlv'ir contribu- 

 tion amounted to considerably more than 12,000 tons 

 of potatoes and 5000 tons of tomatoes. 



In this connection the yields of potatoes secured by 

 (lermany and this country during the war period are 

 worthy of scrutiny. Th« pre-war averages were : 

 (ierm.inv 42,4so,ooo tons. United Kingdom 6,<)5o,ooo 

 tons; and the ficures for 1014 were Germany 

 .11.850,000 tons. United Kingdom 7.476.000 tons. 

 Germany's supreme effort was made in io'5 with a 

 yield of 40,570.000 tons, or about 17 per cent, above 

 thf average. In that year our improvement was onlv 

 half as good as that of Germany, our rroo of 

 7,ejo,ooo tons bettering our average hv onlv 8 per 

 rent. In ii)i6 weather played havoc with the crops 

 in both countries, but Germanv suffered most. The 

 vield fell to 2o,sto,ooo tons, a decrease of more than 

 50 oer cent., whilst our vieUi was down to 5,460.000 

 tons, a falling off of only jo per cent. In the fol- 



• From ih« <>|xninic mli'r*** of lK« Pr««if(«nl of Sfcllon M (Agrkullim) 

 ddivnei' ■! the ('•f'iff mcdirx of lb* RriiUh Aisaciaiion on Aa(u>l (4. 



lowing year Germany could produce no more than 

 30,500,000 tons, or a 90 per cent, crop, whereas the 

 United Kingdom raised 8,604,000 tons, or about 24 per 

 cent, better than the average. Finally, whereas with 

 respect to the 1918 crop in Germany no figures are 

 available, those for the United Kingdom indicate that 

 the 1917 crop actually exceeded that of 1918. There 

 is much food for thought in these figures, but my 

 immediate purpose in citing them is to claim that of 

 the million and three-quarter tons increase in 1917 

 and 1918 a goodly proportion must be put to the credit 

 of the intensive cultivator. 



I regret that no statistics are available to illustrate 

 the war-time food production by professional and 

 amateur gardeners. That it was great I know, but 

 how great I am unable to say. This, however, I can 

 state : that from the day before the outbreak of 

 hostilities, when, with the late secretary of the Royal 

 Horticultural Society, I started the intensive food- 

 production cam[)aign by urging publicly the autumn 

 sowing of vegetables — a practice both then and now 

 insufficiently followed — the amateur and professional 

 gardeners addressed themselves to the work of pro- 

 ducing food with remarkable energy and success. No 

 less remarkable and successful was the work of the 

 old and new allotment holders, so much so indeed 

 that at the time of the armistice there were nearly a 

 million and a half allotment holders cultivating 

 upwards of 125,000 acres of land — an allotment for 

 every five households in England and Wales. It is a 

 pathetic commentary on the Peace that Vienna 

 should find itself obliged to do now what was done 

 here during the war, namely, convert its parks 

 and open spaces into allotments in order to supple- 

 ment a meagre food-supply. 



This brief review of war-time intensive cultivation 

 would be incomplete were it to contain no reference 

 to intensive cultivation by the armies at home and 

 abroad. In 1918 the armies at home cultivated 

 5869 acres of vegetables. In the summer of that year 

 the camp and other gardens of our armies in France 

 were producing 100 tons of vegetables a day. These 

 gardens yielded in 1918 14,000 tons of vegetables, 

 worth, according to my estimate,, a quarter of a 

 million pounds sterling, but worth infinitely more if 

 I measured in terms of benefit to the health of the 

 I troops. 



! .As the result of Gen. M.iudc's initiative, the Forces 

 I in .Mesopotamia became great gardeners, and in 1918 

 ' priKluce<l 800 tons of vegetables, apart altogether from 

 the large cultivations carried out by his Majesty's 

 Forres in that wonderfully fertile land. In the same- 

 year the Forces at Salonika had about 7000 acres 

 under agricultural and horticultural crops, and raised 

 ! produce which effected a saving of more than 

 50,000 shipping tons. 



Even from this brief record it will, I Ix'lieve, be 

 conceded that intensive cultivation played a useful and 

 j significant part in the war. What, it may be asked, 

 I is the part which it is destined to play in the future? 

 So far as I am able to lenrn, there exist in this 

 country two schools of thought or opinion on the 

 subject of the prospects of intensive cultivation, 

 the optimistic and the (>essin>i«tic schools. The 

 former sees visions of large communities of small 

 cultivators colonising the countryside of England, 

 increasing and multiplying both pro<luction And them- 

 selves, a nutTierous, prosperous, and happy people and 



NO. 2661, VOL. 106] 



