vi PREFACE 



intensive farming in the United Kingdom received a 

 great set-back in the 'eighties and 'nineties, when the 

 continued opening up of new areas of virgin soil and 

 the fall in freights filled the country with corn and meat 

 at prices below our cost of production under the condi- 

 tions then prevailing, because declining prices cannot be 

 met by more intensive methods, but only by a reduction 

 in the expenditure. However, we are steadily recover- 

 ing from that position : the supply of rich virgin soil is 

 not without a limit nor are its riches inexhaustible ; the 

 cost of production has begun to rise in the new 

 countries, already we see the American farmer is in 

 his turn being compelled to resort to fertilisers; and 

 with each rise in prices the intensive farmer can 

 recoup himself for an increased outlay. The future, 

 too, lies with intensive farming ; every year the 

 ratio of the cultivable land to the population of the 

 world shrinks ; every year science puts fresh resources in 

 the hands of the farmer. In the United Kingdom for 

 some time the stream may still run backwards and the 

 more expensive forms of arable cultivation continue to 

 be replaced by grass which demands no outlay, because 

 as long as ours is the one market open to the competi- 

 tion of all other countries selling agricultural produce, 

 prices are still liable to such wreckage as frightens the 

 home grower out of the business ; still, in the end, what- 

 ever agriculture survives in this country will be forced 

 into more and more intensive methods by the increasing 

 scarcity of the land. As it is, the specialist farmers 

 in Great Britain — the potato growers, the market 

 gardeners, the hop growers — have reached a pitch of 

 cultivation which is hardly to be paralleled elsewhere. 

 Intensive farming implies the use of fertilisers ; still 



