142 PRODUCTION 



that the numbers of live-stock are kept within proper limits, an< 

 the pastures are given the periodical rests that they require, it 

 seems that under ordinary conditions such lands will continue to 

 carry stock and to produce wool and meat over extended periods 

 of time, without the risk of any serious decrease in the product. 

 However, only land remote from centres of population can be used 

 profitably in this way for lengthened periods. 



Sooner or later, there usually comes a stage where cropping in 

 some form is resorted to, in order to obtain an increased quantity 

 of animal produce. Hay is ordinarily the first crop, and this crop, 

 if fed to animals that remain on the land till sold in a more or less 

 finished state, may be taken in successive years without the use of 

 fertilisers ; this practice may not result in soil exhaustion, pro- 

 vided as before that the pastured stock is not excessive. A hay 

 crop really results in a smaller number of animals being carried in 

 summer and a larger number in winter than would otherwise be 

 the case. Three to four acres are required in most countries to 

 maintain one head of cattle under these conditions. The yield in 

 meat per acre per annum is low, and it is presumed that the rate 

 of withdrawals from the soil is not more rapid than the natural 

 process of restoration. 



When agriculture invades a region either in the first stage of 

 settlement or after an interval of predominant pastoral industries, 

 the productive capacity of the land is hastened, and crops or finished 

 animals can be sold off the land more rapidly than the latter is 

 able to renew its fertility unaided. If the process is continued, 

 as it has been during the last 40 years in North and South America 

 and elsewhere, without the addition of fertilisers or the maintenance 

 of a fair number of permanent live-stock, the process of exhaustion, 

 slow at first, becomes more and more rapid, and the law of 

 diminishing returns operates actively. Every agricultural region 

 throughout the world is threatened with this, unless proper limits 

 are observed. Since live-stock in all but the more remote parts 

 of overseas countries are now fed partly upon cereals or other crops 

 drawn from the soil, it is clear that the output of animal foodstuffs 

 is limited by the same conditions. Nevertheless the maintenance 

 of a certain number of animals is recognised as an indirect means 

 of keeping up soil fertility by providing for crop-rotation. The best 

 results in this direction are obtained when the stock consist of dairy 

 cattle, 1 and additional supplies of feeds tuffs are purchased from 

 elsewhere. 2 It has been found that certain exclusively grain- 

 growing farms, such, for example, as are to be found in Western 



1 Professor Taylor, in his Agricultural Economics (p. 82), states that on a 

 farm where butter and cheese only are sold, the loss of fertility is only one- 

 tenth of that involved in selling a maize crop. 



* If the maintenance of fertility is made to depend entirely upon the gains 

 effected through purchasing feedstuffs from elsewhere, there can easily arise 

 a vicious circle from the world point of view. In the end it would be robbing 

 Peter to pay Paul, unless the feedstuffs are of tropical origin. Hence the 

 significance of tropical oil-seeds and their products. 



