COST PRICE AND COSTS OF PRODUCTION 175 



The consuming population has increased faster than the number 

 of meat-producing animals, 1 and this is especially true of the great 

 consuming continents, namely, Europe and North America. The 

 survey of the various surplus-producing areas has shown that the 

 limits of surplus production under the present methods are in sight, 2 

 the only notable exception being temperate South America. Since 

 the year 1900 the shipment of live animals from the New World 

 to Europe has declined almost to vanishing point, while the world's 

 total of exported meat supplies has risen but moderately. The 

 United Kingdom has received the bulk of the live animals sent from 

 overseas ports to Europe. 3 The decline in this trade since is a 

 remarkable one. In 1901 cattle numbering 495,635 and sheep 

 numbering 383,594 reached the United Kingdom, while in 1913 

 the corresponding figures were 14,743 and 501. 4 The total exports 

 of meat and meat products from the nine principal surplus coun- 

 tries are shown in the following table for different years. 5 



YEAR. MILLION LBS. 



1899 3,520 



1903 3,100 



1906 3,778 



1912 3,861 



Average for years 1898 to 1911 3,500 



For these exports the countries of Western Europe were, of 

 course, the chief customers. When allowance is made for the decline 

 in the numbers of live food animals imported into them, it will be 

 seen that the actual increase in the quantities of meat, alive and 

 dead, that reached them from other continents were very little, if 

 at all, greater in 1912 than in 1899. 6 The increase is in any case 

 small compared with that of the potential demand for meat in 

 Western Europe, since every increase in population in an area 

 already fully occupied as agricultural land, tends to cause a greater 

 proportionate increase in the demand for imported meat, owing 

 to the immobilisation of an increasing proportion of that limited 

 area for the production of cereals and other food crops. The 

 difficulty has, however, been obviated to some extent, first by 

 making the land more productive under intensive methods, and 



1 See Chap. iii. above, pp. 37-9. 



2 Compare the following quotation from an American writer : " Among 

 most peoples of the world meat is something of a luxury and is becoming 

 more so. J. Russell Smith, Industrial and Commercial Geography, p. 119. 



3 The only other European countries that have imported notable quantities 

 of live animals from places outside Europe, are France (from Algeria and 

 Madagascar), and Russia (from Siberia). 



1 Pigs are omitted because seldom transported as live meat by sea. 



6 The figures in this table have been taken from Report 109, U.S. Dept. 

 Agric. Bureau of Crop Estimates, pp. 72-3. They include the exports from 

 European countries such as Denmark and Holland which have themselves 

 increased and should, in strict accuracy, be omitted for the purpose of the 

 comparison. 



6 Cf. Chap. viii. above, p. 141 and note 1. 



