CHAPTER II 



GENERAL SURVEY OF THE SOURCES OF PRODUCTION AND 



WORLD TRADE 



WHEN the various sources of production of animal foodstuffs 

 are considered, as they exist at the present day, it is seen 

 that practically the whole of the world's output of these 

 articles is raised within the temperate regions, and the same is 

 true of practically all the animal feedstuffs of international trade. 

 Those parts of the earth's surface that lie beyond the Arctic and 

 Antarctic circles may at once be excluded. The only food-pro- 

 ducing animal found in these cold regions is the reindeer of the 

 Northern Arctic plains, which furnishes an important element in 

 the food supply of the scanty, semi-civilised Eskimo population, 

 but in no case yields anything of food value for export purposes. 

 The tropical regions, taken in the climatic sense, may also, with 

 one or two exceptions, be excluded. The peninsulas and islands, 

 as it were, of temperate climatic conditions, formed by the upland 

 elevations continued equatorwards from the adjoining temperate 

 zones, and by the isolated plateaus and mountain peaks, situated 

 within the tropical circles, are regionally distinct from the neigh- 

 bouring lowlands, and are to be considered separately in a question 

 where climate plays so important a part as it does in the present 

 one. Certain parts of the tropical regions are exceptional in so 

 far as they export products that furnish animal feedstuffs, of which 

 the most striking are : first, tropical oil-seeds and copra ; second, 

 a small quantity of cotton-seed cake from cotton grown in tropical 

 countries ; third, molasses from tropical sugar-cane plantations in 

 the East and West Indies, in India and Northern South America. 

 The tropical regions, as defined above, export practically nothing 

 in the way of food products of animal origin, and raise very little 

 for local consumption, since the climatic conditions and the general 

 low standard of living make it possible for whole populations to 

 exist on products of the vegetable kingdom, eked out with fish, 

 and in some cases with game and poultry. 



The tropical highlands of temperate climate may now be con- 

 sidered more particularly. These, taken together, are of special 

 interest from the point of view of the world's future meat supplies, 

 since they represent the largest undeveloped regions now remaining 

 in the world, climatically suitable for raising of meat-producing 

 animals. The most important of these in the Northern Hemisphere 

 are the Highlands of Abyssinia, the Highlands of Indo-China, and 

 Southern China, the Southern Mexican plateau and its continuations 

 in Central America, and the Highlands of Columbia, Venezuela 

 and Guiana ; in the Southern Hemisphere the most important are 



