utilize Senii-ayid Zones 147 



to plant, vi/., in every nook and corner you can come 

 across, wet or dry, drained or irrigated, up on the hills or 

 down in the valley. In spite of the horrible depopulation 

 that the War is bringing about, those that remain will 

 still continue to outstrip the supplies obtained by those 

 that are left, unless you come to our aid and utilize lands 

 at present of little or no value to increase the output. 



Dr. Durand last year, you will remember, touched upon 

 the subject (see Wichita Proceedings, p. 113) and the case 

 to-day is much worse than it was when he addressed you. 

 At that time the W^ar had only recently started and yet he 

 told us that to increase the production of food more land 

 must be used, or more must be got out of the land. 

 Either of these may be accomplished in two ways, by 

 more labour or by more science. Necessity I believe will 

 produce the labour : for we will have to go back to the 

 l)eginning in many things, and the beginning means 

 agriculture ; city life and factories came long after ; for 

 trade and commerce are the daughters of agriculture, not 

 her parents. 



Dr. Durand then went on to say that taking the world 

 over, there is still much unused but usable land. It will 

 be necessary for us to use more and more of those lands 

 where moisture is somewhat deficient. Some of the land 

 will be better adapted to grazing and to forestry than to 

 tillage. In arid and semi-arid sections, there are large areas 

 capable of cultivation. . . It is a familiar fact that 



Western ICurope produces far more food per acre than the 

 United States, which can, however, support many times 

 its present population and obtain far larger yields of each 

 particular crops. In the long run, the man who devises 

 means of producing food where none was produced before, 

 or of increasing the yield of the land, will be looked upon as 

 a greater benefactor than any other discoverer or inventor. 

 To Canada and America therefore I would say : Obtain 

 yields similar in size to what Europe can turn out as shown 

 m the following table, thereby taking steps to support many 

 times your present population and send your surplus crops 

 to us to buy, for we need them now, and shall need them 

 still more in the near future. 



So much for science and now in conclusion a word as to 

 labour, and in these remarks I would perhaps address 

 myself more particularly to my fellow-Britishers and say : 

 You should arrange with the mother-country to train a 

 large proportion of her children as agriculturists, including 

 dry-farming methods. In England our Educationists seem 



