THE RATE OF CONSUMPTION 225 



effective in restraining the upward trend of land values, until pro- 

 duction became sufficiently increased by the progress of intensi- 

 fication to allow of a free consumption of animal foodstuffs without 

 causing pressure upon land resources. 



It has been pointed out in the preceding pages that imports and 

 exports of feedstuffs are equivalent in reality to imports and exports 

 of meat and dairy produce. Now it should be noted that consign- 

 ments of cereal feedstuffs represent potential consignments of wheat 

 and other plant foodstuffs for human consumption directly. There 

 remain, of course, considerable residue quantities of milling offals 

 and of seed-cakes that can best be utilised as feedstuffs for food- 

 producing animals; but these would suffice to produce only a 

 fraction of the present supplies of animal foodstuffs without the 

 produce, whether cereal feedstuffs, fodder crops, or pasture grasses, 

 of much land that could be used for growing food-crops. The great 

 quantities of cereals and other feed materials grown throughout the 

 temperate parts of the world purposely for consumption by animals, 

 constitute in some measure a drain upon agricultural resources. 



In the course of this inquiry we shall consider how the tax upon 

 agricultural resources may, if necessary, be relieved in some limited 

 measure by changes in the consumption of white populations, 

 whereby part of the animal foodstuffs now consumed may be 

 replaced by plant foodstuffs and certain animal foodstuffs by others 

 that are, as a rule, more economically produced. We shall see, as 

 we proceed that the production of animal foodstuffs is no longer 

 economical of resources when it ceases to be incidental to the main 

 business of raising food crops ; so long as it uses land or agricultural 

 produce (in crop rotations or otherwise) that would else remain 

 unutilised, all is well ; but when it competes actively with food 

 crops for the use of agricultural resources, it becomes theoretically 

 uneconomical from the point of view of human nourishment. The 

 same principle applies within the group of animal foodstuffs them- 

 selves, as, for example, to the production of meat as incidental to 

 that of dairy products. In order to obtain the maximum food 

 values from given agricultural resources, it is obvious that the con- 

 sumption of animal foodstuffs should be adjusted so that it absorbs 

 all that is produced in this incidental wa}' and nothing more. This 

 may for convenience be called the principle of incidental production 

 in relation to consumption. 



All this may be somewhat negative in that it appears to cut across 

 the normal working of supply and demand, but it serves as a guide 

 in what may be termed a " policy of nutrition," a thing not alto- 

 gether unknown in European countries during the present war, and 

 of possible wider application in the future. 



There exists the positive problem, namely, that of increasing the 

 productive agricultural resources relative to the consuming popula- 

 tions. The main effective methods in this direction have been dis- 

 cussed in Part I., above, and a short reference to some special 

 methods appears at the close of Chap. v. below. 



