374 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 



" How to Increase Britain's Agricultural Produc- 

 tion." I have here room for only a few passages. 

 Mr. Douglas says, among other things : — 



The fundamental reason for the depression of agri- 

 culture in Britain is not low prices but small crops, and 

 British farming can only be benefited by increasing the 

 size of the crops without adding much to the cost of 

 production. . . . Belgium, although thickly populated, 

 supplies nearly the whole of London, as well as herself, 

 with vegetables. ... In England there are cattle and 

 horse breeding societies ; but of what use is all this when 

 fodder is wanting ? ... In 1902 the imports into England 

 of meat, cattle, oats, butter, margarine, milk, and cheese 

 were to the value of £86,000,000. These imports she 

 could produce herself if the soil were so manured as to 

 give double or treble the yield of fodder. . . . The in- 

 crease of yield in Continental countries has been accom- 

 plished, despite stubborn opposition, by the introduction 

 and application of the principle that those nutritive 

 vegetable substances which have been extracted from the 

 soil by the crops must be replaced. But there is by no 

 means sufficient farmyard manure to supply the soil's 

 needs. . . . The most important question for Great 

 Britain is to teach the farmer how best to use the different 

 (artificial) manures, and to furnish him with the required 

 manures at the cheapest possible rate. The use of mineral 

 manure would never have been so general in Germany had 

 it not been that both these questions were thoroughly 

 and systematically examined by special organizations 

 throughout the country whose influence penetrated to 

 every village. These organizations are agricultural co- 

 operative corporations which afford the farmer the oppor- 

 tunity of buying the right sort of manure at a cheap price. 



