loo LAND FOR FOOD PRODUCTION 



its large proportion of polders and wet land, the arable 

 amounted to 40 per cent, of the land reckoned as in 

 cultivation. 



There is another aspect of the case to be considered : 

 though the average yield from British land is high 

 compared with those attained in most other countries, 

 it is susceptible of very considerable improvement. For 

 many crops, especially roots, the average yield returned 

 is very far below that which an ordinarily good farmer 

 expects and indeed consistently attains. To a certain 

 extent the good farmers are in possession of the best 

 land, but none the less the bulk of the cropped land will 

 yield much more liberal returns with the use of more 

 fertilizers and more skilled cultivation. It may be 

 calculated that the farmers in the United Kingdom only 

 consume artificial fertilizers of one sort or another at the 

 rate of little more than 1* cwt. per acre of arable land 

 per annum ; with good farming this quantity could be 

 doubled with advantage, and we might expect to realize 

 from this cause alone 10 per cent, increase in the total 

 production of crops. It is not too much to say that if the 

 farming throughout Great Britain reached the standard, 

 not of the best, but of the good farmers existing in every 

 district, there would be an increased production of food 

 of from 10 to 15 per cent, without any addition to the 

 existing proportion of arable land. 



Denmark has already been mentioned as a country 

 possessing an exceptionally high proportion of arable 

 land, but Denmark is even more instructive as an 

 example of how a country can regenerate its agriculture 

 within a comparatively short space of time. After the 

 disastrous war of 1864 a great national movement 



* See Appendix IV. 



