DISCOVERY 



323 



and then from his eldest son, and after tea and cakes 

 had been produced on the verandah we moved into a 

 beautiful guest-room, which, with humble apologies 

 for its " disgustingly filthy accommodation," was 

 placed at mj- disposal. Nothing could have been more 

 delightful than the attentive interest with which my 

 plans were listened to, though the idea of a stranger 

 coming so far and taking so much trouble to climb 

 unknown mountains for pleasure was wholly unintelli- 

 gible to these old-world dwcUers in the fields. The 

 most experienced hunters of the little hamlet were 

 summoned to act as my guides, and when I fared forth 

 at dawn on the morrow I found that, to do me special 

 honour, the son of the house himself was there to bear 

 me company. On the evening of the following day, 

 after a delightful and successful expedition, we ap- 

 proached the parental roof once more, when, to my 

 surprise, my companion abruptly left me \vithout a 

 word and disappeared v\-ithin the family apartments. 

 For the moment I felt considerable embarrassment at 

 the possibility of some unwitting offence on my part ; 

 but when presently a little maid appeared and, bowing 

 her head to the matted floor, humbly begged me to 

 " augustly condescend to enter the honourable hot 

 bath," I saw my young friend's haste had been simply 

 due to his hospitable desire to have my bath ready on 

 my arrival. To tliis day, over the intervening years, 

 I can still gratefully hear the farewell greeting with 

 which the next morning I was sped on my way : 

 " Please honourably deign to come back to us again." 

 I felt anew that the ancient title of his land, Kunshi no 

 Koku (" the Country of Gentlemen "), was still justified 

 in such men as the Yamaguchi soncho of Iwahara. 



British Agriculture and 

 the Food Supply 



By E. W. Shanahau, M.A., D.Sc. 



The Government has decided to decontrol agriculture, 

 but, even if this decision had not been taken, it is fairly 

 clear that, so long as Great Britain retains its industrial 

 prosperity, it cannot hope to obtain much more than 

 one-half of its total food consumption from within the 

 British Isles. For over a century past the latter have 

 been a deficiency area in respect of food-stuffs. 



Time and again in the past, but especially during the 

 war period, it has been maintained that this country 

 could easily become much more self-supporting in the 

 matter of food supplies of non-tropical origin. Never- 

 theless, during the last fifty .years, except for a brief 



period between 1915 and 1919, there has been a gradual 

 but continuous decUne in the proportion of the total 

 food consumed in the United Kingdom that was 

 actually produced there. These islands are not 

 adapted to cereal cultivation on a large scale ; good 

 wheat land is limited, the climate is uncertain, and the 

 profits to be derived from this branch of agriculture 

 relatively small. Except in favoured parts, therefore, 

 wheat crops tend to be grown as Uttle more than a side- 

 line in the general scheme of rotation-farming. An 

 extension of the wheat-area at the present time could 

 be obtained only at increased prices for all wheat 

 raised here, and the increase would necessarily fall 

 directly or indirectly upon the nation as consumers 

 and render it that much poorer. Some money might 

 be saved from " going out of the country," but it would 

 be dear money. 



The present standing of British agriculture is due to 

 a balance of remunerativeness between that industry 

 on the one hand and manufactures and commerce on 

 the other. Great Britain has hitherto been a relatively 

 rich country just because a number of its citizens were 

 engaged in business more remunerative than agricul- 

 ture ; they received on the average a greater return 

 for, say, each hour's work than did the people of most 

 other countries. If manufactures, mining, and com- 

 merce had not been so profitable, it is almost certain 

 that a greater proportion of the population would have 

 been engaged in producing food and that the country 

 would have been more self-supporting in respect of 

 such necessities. We cannot have it both ways. To 

 wish now for a greater proportion of home-grown food 

 in our dietary is to wish that we should all be poorer, 

 either through having to work harder for what we get, 

 as some of our neighbours do, or by getting less for the 

 same work ; unless farmers as a body become very 

 intelligent and enterprising and the internal system of 

 marketing farm-produce much more economical ; or 

 unless, forsooth, we can persuade those engaged in 

 agriculture to work harder than the rest of the popula- 

 tion without extra remuneration. We could, of 

 course, contrive to levy a ta.x on all non-agricultural 

 industries, and assist agriculture with the proceeds, 

 and thus probably succeed in diverting some attention 

 from the former to the latter, from the more profitable 

 to the less profitable industry. 



It would indeed be remarkable if the people of the 

 British Isles were now producing anything approaching 

 the w^hole of their food requirements. Owing to their 

 wealth they have learned to expect a high standard of 

 diet, one in which foods such as meat, that require for 

 their production a comparatively large area of land per 

 unit of nourishment, occupy an important place ; so 

 that the agricultural resources demanded by each 

 inhabitant in Great Britain are greater than for any 



