266 CONSUMPTION 



likelv to be still more so in the near future. Animal fats rose con- 



^ 



siderably in price in the period 1903 to 1913, and are expected to 

 rise further. 1 Consumers are, therefore, being driven to find such 

 substitutes as exist. Butter, though an excellent substitute in 

 itself, is out of the question because it is still more expensive ; if 

 price levels be taken as a guide, butter is more costly to produce in 

 terms of agricultural resources than refined animal fats such as lard 

 and oleo. 2 The great substitutes for animal fats are vegetable oils, 

 consumed either as such, as, for example, olive oil and its substi- 

 tutes, or in the manufactured forms of margarine and imitation 

 lard. Indeed vegetable oils are not only being substituted for 

 animal fats, but show a strong and a growing tendency to take the 

 place of butter in the consumption of large sections of the popula- 

 tion of Europe. The movement in both these directions obviously 

 results in an economy of temperate agricultural resources. Further 

 progress on these lines may cause a marked reduction to take place 

 in the share of the world's agricultural resources devoted to the 

 production of animal fats, and may, moreover, cause a greater pro- 

 portion of the total milk output to be utilised in other ways than 

 in making butter. 



Other forms of substitution that may be noted here consist in 

 the displacing of certain kinds of meat by others. Here, again, 

 changes in the habits of consumption, originating in alteied con- 

 ditions of production tend to become more or less fixed and then 

 to modify further the forms of production. It will be seen that 

 such changes tend to follow the line of progress in production from 

 less intensive to more intensive forms of animal husbandry. It 

 has already been observed that the production of beef and mutton 

 depends largely, though not altogether, upon the existence of 

 pastures, while that of dairy products, veal, pig meat, and even of 

 poultry and eggs is connected more particularly with the more 

 intensive forms of agriculture in which fodder and feed crops are 

 prominent and the charges for labour bear a relatively high pro- 

 portion to the total costs of production. There has already been 

 a marked decline in a number of countries in the per capita con- 

 sumption of mutton, 3 and a similar decline in beef consumption 



1 See Report of Committee on Edible Oil-producing Nuts and Seeds (Cd. 

 8248). para. 7. 



2 The wholesale price of butter on the London market prior to the year 

 1914 was more than double that of lard or oleo. 



3 This is borne out by a study of the statistics of meat consumption in 

 certain countries where figures are available for different years, as shown 

 in table opposite. 



The average exports of mutton, inclusive of live sheep, for the period 

 1902-4 from the nine principal surplus-producing countries were 494 million 

 Ibs., and the same for the years 1911-12 were 548 million Ibs. These exports 

 were sent almost entirely to Europe in which continent the table on p. 41. 

 shows that sheep declined by 3 million in the period 1901-11. If each sheep 

 produces on an average '2 cwt. of mutton annually, the equivalent decline in 

 the production of mutton would be 67 million Ibs, which is greater than the 

 increase in the imports. Since the absolute supplies of mutton in Europe 



