TEMPERATE SURPLUS-PRODUCING REGIONS 97 



fact that it is flanked on either side by the great angles of the 

 Continent that project into the Southern Ocean. The conditions 

 for stock-rearing, therefore, grow steadily worse in South Africa 

 towards the west, and in Southern Australia towards the centre. 

 Like Australia, South Africa has resources in stock-raising for food 

 production, as yet not fully developed ; but specially adapted 

 scientific methods are more urgently necessary in South Africa, 

 and these mean considerable well-directed government expenditure 

 and a high degree of intelligence among stock-farmers. The latter 

 may be difficult to secure in South Africa, with its considerable 

 proportion of native stock-owners and the general reliance of 

 European farmers upon native labour. When stock-rearing is 

 more fully developed in the tropical highlands of Rhodesia * and 

 of other northern districts, supplies of meat may be drawn thence 

 by the great mining towns. This would relieve the situation in 

 the Southern Provinces, which, with improved means of internal 

 transport, with dry-farming, fodder crops and inigation, " may 

 even be enabled to enter the world's markets as a competitor with 

 Australasia and the Argentine." 2 



With reference to German South- West Africa, whatever its 

 political future may be, it seems that this area will follow the same 

 course of agricultural and economic development as British South 

 Africa, since both belong to the same climatic region, and have 

 extensive mineral wealth. Stock-raising has already been estab- 

 lished in the highlands of the interior, and mining is, of course, an 

 important industry. Under favourable conditions, there may be 

 some exportable surplus of beef and mutton in the future, as from 

 British South Africa, but this surplus is never likely to be very 

 great. 



China, which lies very largely within the temperate zone, has 

 consideiable interest from the point of view of this inquiry, as 

 regards both the present export surplus and future possibilities. 

 In one direction, namely, poultry farming, it is alieady a most 

 important producer, both for home consumption and for export 

 trade. 3 Pigs are said to be numerous in the South-Eastern 

 Provinces, and some cattle are raised in the same district. 4 Sheep 

 seem to be generally neglected, and neither beef nor mutton is 

 consumed to any extent by the people. 5 



1 See the section on Rhodesia, Chap, v., below. 



2 Dominions Commission, Third Interim Report, p. 31. 



3 " For hundreds of years China was the greatest poultry-producing nation 

 in the world, and probably this is true to-day, not only as regards the total 

 production, but also in per capita use. . . . For considerable portions of the 

 population poultry is the only animal food used, and for the more well-to-do 

 classes it is an ordinary meat diet the year round. . . . The surplus of 

 poultry and poultry products which China can export annually is enormous." 

 U.S. Daily Commerce Reports, Aug. 7th, 1911. 



4 In Kwang Si province cattle, pigs and poultry are raised for export. 

 V.S. Daily Commerce Reports, Oct. 19th, 1911, p. 330. 



& Mutton appears to be distasteful to both the Chinese and the Japanese. 



