FACTORS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION 163 



food value in proportion to weight. But it is the general 

 opinion that it is difficult for a race to maintain a high degree 

 of energy and efficiency without some more concentrated food- 

 stuff. Just how far any country ought to go in the direction of 

 introducing into its diet cheaper foods, or foods which are more 

 economical of land, is therefore a difficult question. But there 

 car scarcely be any question as to the economy of giving up 

 vicious and wasteful habits of consumption ; that is, the con- 

 sumption of such things as opium, alcohol, and tobacco, whose 

 production requires so much valuable land and whose consump- 

 tion adds nothing to comfort and well-being. 



Vegetable vs. meat diet. It is sometimes argued that a 

 vegetable diet is more economical than a meat diet. Where 

 meat can be grown on wild land under what are called range 

 conditions, such as prevailed on the Western plains a generation 

 ago, and such as still prevail in other parts of the New World, it 

 is very economical of labor and therefore a cheap food. It does 

 undoubtedly require a great deal of land, and, as these new areas 

 are settled and become thickly populated, the meat supply will 

 have to come from farms. Here it is an expensive product if it 

 is produced in large quantities. The nutriment in the grain re- 

 quired to fatten a beef animal under present conditions is usually 

 much larger than that of the beef produced, to say nothing of the 

 other things consumed by the animal. Again, the land required 

 to pasture a beef animal for a year would, if put into grain or 

 vegetables, yield a great deal more food than that of the beef 

 which the animal will add to his carcass. These remarks apply, 

 however, only to the production of meat as a staple crop. 

 When produced in small quantities, and as a by-product of ag- 

 riculture, meat is one of the most economical articles of diet 

 which a country can produce. In the first place, in the grow- 

 ing of grain and vegetables there is a great deal of waste mate- 

 rial unsuited to human consumption, but which animals can 



