190 PRODUCTION 



and deducting the value of the by-products. 1 Further, the cost of 

 producing milk may be used as a kind of common denominator for 

 estimating that of meat, because it is known fairly accurately how 

 many beef cattle, or even how many sheep, a pasture farm will 

 carry that produces a given quantity of milk as a dairy farm. This 

 system of establishing equivalents can be extended by allowing 

 for any differences in the quantities of commercial feedstuffs pur- 

 chased. Thus, according to data furnished by experiments con- 

 ducted in England, 2 it would appear that on good land the equiva- 

 lent in milk production for 1 Ib. of beef produced is about 14 Ibs. 

 However, since the labour involved in the production of milk is 

 greater, the cost of producing 1 Ib. of beef would approximate that, 

 say, of 12 Ibs. or nearly 5 quarts of milk, which would yield rather 

 less than f Ib. of butter or 1 J Ibs. of cheese. The cost of producing 

 butter and cheese depends naturally in some degree upon the value 

 assigned to the skim-milk and whey ; the former is sometimes sold 

 for human consumption, but both are mainly consumed by pigs 

 and calves, and the values to be set upon them may be calculated 

 from the market cost of those quantities of commercial feedstuffs, 

 of which they have an equivalent feed value. For such a calcula* 

 tion all the necessary data exist. Finally, the cost of producing 

 pig-meat can be obtained by using these values for the by-products 

 of dairying together with those of any concentrated feedstuffs used. 

 The above method illustrates one that may be usefully employed 

 in estimating the costs of production of different animal foodstuffs 

 in mixed farming. 



The future welfare of the consuming populations demands that 

 the supplies of animal foodstuffs should be reasonably abundant 

 and cheap. It does not appear, however, that these foodstuffs 

 can be produced as cheaply in the immediate future as they have 

 been in the past, for reasons that have been indicated. Obviously 

 much depends upon the manner in which the world's productive 

 resources as a whole are reorganised at the close of the present war. 

 General prosperity inevitably leads, in Europe at any rate, to an 

 increased per capita consumption of animal foodstuffs, which for 

 its satisfaction now requires the wider use of intensive methods of 

 production. The areas throughout the world that can be profit- 

 ably used only for rearing food animals on the extensive system 

 are not very great in proportion to the whole productive area. 

 They are confined mainly to mountainous and broken regions, 

 which naturally have a low average productive capacity, or to 

 regions at present remote from the main lints of transport. There 

 is little possibility, therefore, of a differential price arising for 

 animal foodstuffs at a lower level than that for other classes of 

 agricultural produce, that is to say, the production of animal 



1 About 1 gallon of milk is required to produce 1 Ib. of whole milk cheese 

 and about 2-7 gallons to produce 1 Ib. of butter, the latter, however, varying 

 according to the fat content of the milk used. 



2 See Journal Board oj Agriculture, Sept. 1915, p. 531.. 



