70 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



As much as 9,250,000 tons of corn now goes into live stocks' 

 bellies in the year, apart from offal, as compared with 

 about 5,000,000 tons consumed by human beings. We 

 can produce the same quantities of live stock food, contain- 

 ing the same flesh- and fat-forming constituents, in the 

 shape of green crops, which laugh at rain and storm, far 

 more cheaply and with less trouble and risk. Our legumi- 

 nous crops are full of nitrogenous matter. Then why 

 must we labour and spend, and run the risk of wet harvests 

 and other mishaps, just for the sake of remaining true to 

 our old exploded tradition ? 



With their accustomed Lancashire shrewdness the Co- 

 operative Wholesale Societies give us a very good lead in 

 this matter. They have recently acquired 10,240 acres of 

 excellent wheatland in Canada, specifically for wheat growing, 

 to supply their corn-mills, which provide their stores with 

 flour. The English Co-operative Wholesale Society alone 

 owns besides in this country something like 14,000 acres 

 (independently of what the Scottish Society possesses). On 

 that land it grows wheat only occasionally, as the rotation 

 requires, reserving that land in the main for very much 

 better paying produce. Here we have the proper use 

 indicated severally for colonial land and land at home. 



There is new produce becoming essential to our nourish- 

 ment every day — produce which is not as easily and cheaply 

 transported, produce in the quality of which freshness, such 

 as we can ensure by home production, is an important 

 factor, and produce which yields a much better return in 

 money. It is variety, " diversification," as they call it, 

 that Secretaries of the Department of Agriculture of the 

 United States are, after the example of Germany, most 

 urgently calling for among their farmers — variety which 

 will tell off to every soil and every climate the most suitable 

 and most paying crop, and so bring about the most profit- 

 able utilisation of the land and produce the best value alike 

 for the cultivator and the Nation. 



Do not let us, then, make the decay of our Agriculture 

 worse by going back to the obsolete methods of husbandry ! 

 Man does not live by bread alone, There is other food 



