602 



NATURE 



[January 28, 191 5 



Such a state of continuous toil seems to be the 

 necessary outcome of an individualistic system of 

 farming in countries with no great industrial outlets, 

 where the pressure of an increasing population results 

 in continued subdivision of the land. Of its kind 

 Chinese agriculture is magnificent, so far as one can 

 judge from the accounts ; the land is made to do an 

 extraordinarj' duty, bearing two or three full crops a 

 year ; waste is non-existent, and long experience has 

 taught the farmers to anticipate in practice some of 

 the most recent discoveries of science in the way of 

 conserving and recuperating the fertility of the soil. 

 Though no statistics are available, the land seems to 

 have been raised to its highest level of productivity 

 per acre, just as it has attained its maximum popula- 

 tion-carrying capacitv. 



Now the Australian, like other farmers in new coun- 

 tries, is often reproached for the low yields per acre 

 that he obtains — lo to 15 bushels of wheat per acre, 

 as against 32 in England, and rather more in Holland 

 and JBelgium. Unfavourable as is this comparison of 

 Australia with Europe, still greater appears the 

 superiority of China and Japan, though it cannot be 

 reduced to statistics. But the Australian quite rightly 

 replies by setting up another standard of comparison ; 

 not the production per acre, but the production per 

 man is his criterion, and on this basis the Australian 

 farmer takes a very high position indeed. Against 

 the productivity of the land when labour is unlimited 

 he opposes the ideal of the productivity of the man 

 when aided by machines and unlimited land. 



Organised large-scale farming supports far more 

 people than the labourers actually employed on the 

 land ; it buys machines and raw materials like fer- 

 tilisers, it pays rent and makes profits, all of which 

 go to the support of other people, who are at bottom 

 fed and maintained by the production from the land. 

 I have calculated that the most highly cultivated farm 

 with which I am acquainted in Britain, a farm selling 

 merely meat, potatoes, and corn, would actually sup- 

 port people at the rate of more than 1000 per square 

 mile, if they were to live at such a low subsistence 

 level as that of the Oriental small farmers. The 

 standard of living that in fact prevails is, of course, 

 very different, but, nevertheless, when all the ex- 

 changes of commodities and services against food are 

 completed, that square mile of highly organised farm 

 land is the ultimate support of a population com- 

 parable with that resident on Eastern land even 

 though the number of people actually tilling the soil 

 is small enough. 



But even if the number of people maintained by a 

 given area under Western conditions is far greater 

 than would appear from those employed in cultivating 

 the soil, there must come a time when the pressure 

 of an increasing population will necessitate a much 

 higher agricultural efficiency in the way of production 

 of food per acre. Now, if we attempt to meet this 

 pressure by subdivision of the land, attracted by the 

 specious appearance of a large population supported on 

 the soil, the operation of competition will force them 

 down to such a low standard of living as we find in 

 China and Japan. A large number of men on the 

 land does not necessarily make for more food for the 

 community, because in practice we find that the 

 standard of cultivation and production per acre of the 

 small holder is actually below that of the larger farmer 

 in the same class of business. For example, one 

 thousand acres might be cultivated by twenty men, 

 so as to produce as much food as if it were divided 

 up and made to carry 200 men on five acres apiece ; 

 the community, considered as a whole, is richer in the 

 former case by the labour of 180 men, labour that can 

 be devoted to the production of other articles which the 

 small holders would have to go without. Clearly, if 

 NO. 2361, VOL. 94] 



twenty men can grow a maximum of food on the 

 thousand acres, it is mere waste to employ 200 men 

 about it, though, at first blush, in the latter case, the 

 land seems to be carrying ten times more men. The 

 only question is whetkf^r the intensive cultivation, 

 which is more or less forced upon the two hundred 

 holders of five acres, can be obtained when the area 

 is cultivated, as a whole, by only twenty men. There 

 is no lack of evidence that it can, but the means by 

 which such large-scale farming can in the end beat 

 mere grinding human labour, is by utilising to the 

 full all the resources of science, machinery, and 

 organisation. In fact, when the world becomes fully 

 populated, the application of science to agriculture is 

 the only method by which the community can be saved 

 from falling into the Oriental condition of a com- 

 munit\- of labourers working incessantly for a bare 

 subsistence. 



Now, we may ask ourselves what remains for 

 science to do towards the improvement of agriculture. 

 Practically everything. Agriculture is half as old as 

 man ; centuries of experience, of trial and error, of 

 slowly accumulated observations, are bound up in the 

 routine of the commonest cultivation of the soil ; the 

 science applied to agriculture is at the outside little 

 more than a century old, and so far has only partially 

 succeeded in explaining and justifying existing prac- 

 tices. It is still in the reign of first approximatiohs 

 to the truth ; these specious first approximations which 

 so regularly break dovi'n when applied to the real 

 thing on a large scale, where the second or even the 

 third terms really dominate the issue. The farmer is 

 fond of reproaching the scientific men with the dis- 

 crepancy between theory and practice ; there should 

 be none if the theory is complete, but in such complex 

 matters as the growth of plant and animal we are yet 

 very far from being able to bring into account all the 

 factors concerned. A shipbuilder, for instance, having 

 built to a certain speed and measured off his distance 

 on the map, may reckon on making his port on a 

 certain day ; he finds himself wrong, because of the 

 existence of a current which takes a knot or more off 

 his speed. His theory was not wrong, only incom- 

 I plete. Fuller knowledge may map the currents and 

 their velocity, but even the new calculation may be 

 put out by some unexpected weather factor. Now 

 the growth of a plant is determined by an infinitely 

 more numerous and less measurable series of factors 

 than the speed of a ship, small wonder then that the 

 calculations based upon them are apt to be so 

 erroneous. 



Imperfect as is our knowledge, yet we have pro- 

 gressed far enough to see in what directions fruitful 

 work may be done, and may plan our campaign of 

 research. In connection with the soil, for example, 

 the big problem is probably the prevention of the 

 waste that goes on at an increasing rate as the soil 

 becomes more enriched by the accumulation of organic 

 matter. Many soil bacteria, as we know, deal with 

 the compounds of nitrogen in the soil so as to set free 

 nitrogen gas from them, all of which actions are 

 sheer waste of the most valuable constituent of the 

 soil, and to such an extent does this change take 

 place that we cannot, as a rule, expect to recover in 

 the crop more than one-half of the nitrogen contained 

 in farmyard manure applied to the soil. \\'here the 

 soil is rich, and a high level of production is being 

 arrived at, the percentage of waste may be even 

 greater; for example, on the Rothamsted wheat plot, 

 which has received 14 tons of dung every year, only 

 about one-quarter of the nitrogen applied in the 

 manure has been recovered in the crop, and less than 

 a quarter remains stored in the soil. When a hundred 

 pounds of nitrate of soda per acre is applied, nearly 

 the whole of the nitrogen it contains will be recovered 



