22 PRODUCTION 



the Highlands of Rhodesia and neighbouring South Central Africa, 

 the Highlands of Queensland and of the Northern Territory in 

 Australia, and the extensive Brazilian Highlands. 



Several causes have hitherto hindered the development of animal 

 industries in these regions. The prime cause lies, perhaps, in the 

 fact that there has been a fairly abundant supply till recently from 

 the temperate zones ; but there have been other causes, among 

 which are, first, remoteness of these regions from the world's high- 

 ways and markets ; second, their frequent inaccessibility owing to 

 intervening forest-covered lowlands, often unhealthy for Europeans ; 

 third, the difficulties in the way of railway construction owing to 

 the mountainous and broken physical structure ; fourth, the 

 occupation of some of them, as, for example, in Central and in South 

 America ;,by indolent and unenterprising peoples; and fifth, and 

 not least, the curse of animal diseases and pests such as cattle tick, 

 cattle fever, tsetse fly, and others that in one form or another, have 

 hitherto played such havoc with the European stock introduced, 

 which in any case degenerates in these regions. To evolve by 

 judicious crosses, disease-resisting, and at the same time profitable 

 breeds of stock, suitable to the conditions of these different locali- 

 ties, is a task that remains still much in the future. Into the 

 possibilities of each of these regions above mentioned, it will be 

 necessary to enter in more detail at a later stage. For the present 

 it is sufficient to note that few of them as yet have any surplus of 

 animal foodstuffs for export, and that, taken altogether, the total 

 production of such foodstuffs in them scarcely exceeds the con- 

 sumption. So that the meat-consuming and producing world 

 gets at present little assistance from them. 



There thus remains only such countries as are within the North 

 and South temperate belts, and upon these the world has to rely 

 for its supplies of meat and dairy produce. In them the productive 

 land is largely already occupied, though considerable areas are not 

 yet producing as much as they are capable of doing, and certainly 

 will do, under more intensive methods of cultivation and animal 

 husbandry. How far the progress of intensive farming will tend to 

 favour animal raising in particular, rather than other forms of pro- 

 duction, is a question to which an answer will be attempted later. 

 The conditions at present, however, are such that the industries 

 of meat-production and dairying and of poultry rearing are carried 

 on for all practical purposes, with the notable exception of China, 

 exclusively within the temperate regions inhabited by white men. 

 The labour involved must therefore be done by white men, whose 

 standard of living, especially in the newer countries in North and 

 South America, South Africa, and Australasia, is a high one. 

 Serious competition from tropical countries where cheap coloured 

 labour can be employed is out of the question, and there is no 

 likelihood of such labour being imported for this purpose into the 

 producing countries. It is unfortunate also, in respect of animal- 

 food supplies; that the bounty of nature in the tropics cannot at 



