The Landowner 



From the national point of view one of the 

 chief needs is that more food should be pro- 

 duced in the country. There are at this 

 moment some 12,000,000 acres of poorly-laid 

 down, neglected, unproductive grass land that 

 could be put to much better use. 



The question of the yield per acre, or rather 

 per square mile — because it is in considering the 

 larger area that our waste of land is most 

 apparent — is one for the landowner as well as 

 for the farmer. I fear that the need of more 

 intensive farming is not thoroughly understood 

 by landowners ; as a rule they assented, during 

 the period of depression, to increased extensive 

 methods as the best way of meeting the crisis 

 — i.e., less labour and less manure bestowed 

 upon the soil until over large areas these were 

 reduced to below the economic minimum. 



All scientific experiments at Rothamsted 

 and elsewhere, while they show that there is a 

 maximum output which it is unremunerative to 

 exceed, clearly prove that there is a minimum 

 which is disastrous ; also that a more than 

 ordinary application of labour and artificials to 

 the soil is commercially sound, and that ex- 

 penditure in this direction is directly and im- 

 mediately remunerative. 



English landowners must learn to regard 

 their estates as business concerns to a far 

 greater degree than has been customary in the 



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