270 CONSUMPTION 



The weakness of the sheep as a meat-producer lies in the high 

 proportion of breeding ewes necessary ; a sheep slaughtered at 

 the age of 12 months appears to be a fairly economical meat- 

 producer ; x but while breeding ewes, as such, produce only wool, 

 the dairy cows from which a large proportion of the beef stock are 

 derived, produce considerable quantities of milk. From the point 

 of view of farm accounting also, if the wool produced by sheep is 

 reckoned as a credit item together with its meat, then the difference 

 in value between the hides of beef-cattle and sheep skins should be 

 similarly treated. Nevertheless in considering the future of the 

 sheep in meat production, it must be noted that there are, and 

 always will be, vast areas in the continents outside Europe, where 

 for geographical and other reasons, sheep can be more economically 

 raised than any other animals ; from these regions the world in 

 the future will be driven, in the absence of a rapid increase in agri- 

 cultural resources relative to population, to derive an increasing 

 proportion of its wool and mutton supplies. Wherever agriculture 

 becomes intensive, as it tends to do in Europe and parts of North 

 America, sheep have not only declined, but seem destined to dis- 

 appear still further in favour of more economical food-producing 

 animals, among which cattle, taken as a whole, must be included. 

 Only a very keen demand for wool could strengthen their position 

 there ; the demand for fresh mutton and lamb will hardly be 

 effective, because prices would soon cause consumers to turn, as 

 is desirable, to the substitutes. In Great Britain, however, where 

 sheep are reared on a more or less intensive system by fattening 

 on root and fodder crops, they have declined little in absolute 

 numbers in recent years, though considerably relative to the popu- 

 lation. The similar semi-intensive system of rearing sheep in New 

 Zealand, the greatest of mutton and lamb exporting countries, has 

 already been noted (Part I., Chap. iv.). If the more intensive 

 methods of mutton production can be developed further but only 

 on this condition sheep may be able to hold their own to a limited 

 extent in regions suited to the rearing of cattle and other meat- 

 producing animals. The development of more intensive methods 

 in sheep-rearing would, of course, be assisted by any improvements 

 in breeding which should lead to the evolution of a type superior 

 to those existing, in combined wool and mutton producing capacity. 

 As it is, the only marked advantages that sheep show in meat- 

 production, as compared with competing animals, are that they 

 can be fattened with less^concentrated'feedstuffs ; that they can 

 subsist upon rough hill and mountain pastures unsuitable for cattle ; 

 and that the labour charges in tending and feeding them*are com- 

 paratively light. 



On the whole, notwithstanding the fact that changes in the forms 

 of consumption of foodstuffs on the part of any given population 

 in the mass are liable to^friction owing to peculiar tastes and pre- 



1 T. B. Wood, The National Food Supply in Peace and War, p. 32, 



