5° Agriculture and the Community). 



larg-e scale ; the use of machinery is only profitable on 

 larg-e fields and when the machine can be given a full 

 measure of work in proportion to its cost. The large 

 farmer is more likely to apply science and bring knowledge 

 to his business; the small holder must be conservative in 

 his methods, and generally becomes very unprogressive. 

 Though the personal attention that the small holder can 

 give to details may be supposed to be of special value in 

 the handling of milch cows, the management of fruit, etc., 

 in practice the organization at the command of the farmer 

 on a large scale secures an equal or a better result. It is 

 true to say that in districts where intensive cultivation 

 is practised by both small and large occupiers, the actual 

 cultivation is better, the gross production and the net 

 profits are larger upon the holdings of 50 to 100 acres 

 than upon those of from 5 to 20 acres. In fact, the really 

 good small holder soon gets possession of a larger acreage 

 and ceases to be a small holder. 



It follows that small holdings are only likely to answer 

 for such forms of agriculture as produce a large gross 

 return per acre, and when the proportion that manual 

 labour bears to the other costs of production is high. This 

 almost confines successful small holding to the production 

 of vegetables, fruit, and flowers ; as regards the production 

 of meat and corn, and to some extent milk, the small 

 holder cannot compete with the large. It is doubtful 

 whether the market for fruit and vegetables is capable of 

 considerable expansion. Akin to this restriction is the 

 fact that small holdings only answer on good land, or at 

 any rate on light land that is responsive to fertilizers and 



