272 CONSUMPTION 



ductive lands have been misused or are not utilised to their full 

 capacity. Public expenditure on transport and storage facilities, 

 which has increased rapidly in recent years, comes under the same 

 head. Unfortunately, however, while the market for foodstuffs 

 is international, public control of the means and methods of agri- 

 cultural production is limited to the territories of individual states, 

 so that the surplus-producing countries may lag behind in this 

 matter until the pressure of population or market conditions 

 induce them to take State action. In the field of animal industries 

 some of the most pressing problems lie in the control and eradica 

 tion of animal diseases, which cause enormous havoc among live- 

 stock, especially in the newer countries. 1 Some efforts have been 

 made to seek the causes of these diseases and to check the destruc- 

 tion worked by them, but except in Western Europe, the results 

 have been comparatively small, and much remains to be done in 

 this department of veterinary science. This is essentially a matter 

 for State action in the various countries concerned, and public 

 attention is likely to be directed to it, especially if stimulated by 

 a shortage of animal foodstuffs. If epidemics of animal diseases 

 could be more or less completely mastered, not only would there 

 be a marked increase in the meat production of the existing flocks 

 and herds, but animal rearing could be successfully carried into 

 vast regions of warmer climate, that at present produce little or 

 nothing of food value to mankind. 2 



So far as any positive extensions in the effective agricultural 

 resources are produced directly or indirectly in these or in any other 

 ways, to that extent the residue available for the production of 

 animal foodstuffs tends to be increased. These developments 

 work hand in hand with the principle of incidental production and 

 in the broadest sense constitute an extension of that principle. 



Animal industries are so thoroughly established in the general 

 systems of agriculture in regions populated by Europeans that 

 there is little likelihood of their being largely displaced. Similarly 

 animal foodstuffs in one form or another are regarded as a neces- 

 sity in the diet of most white populations, and nothing but a very 

 great decline in agricultural resources relative to the population to 

 be maintained, would be sufficient to cause these populations to 

 do without them to any great extent. We have seen that even 

 under these conditions various circumstances would cause animal 



1 Some indication of the great losses from this source in the United States 

 alone is given by the following figures (U.S. Dept. of Agric. Report, 109, 

 p. 141) : The annual losses by disease of cattle since 1900 have ranged from 

 1-1 to 1-475 millions ; of sheep since 1889 from -8 to 1-8 millions ; of pigs since 

 1884 from 2-0 to 7-0 millions. It may be presumed that the losses in other 

 newly settled areas are in proportion. 



2 The largest areas in this class exist in North and South America (including 

 Central America) from the lower Mississippi Valley to Northern Argentina. 

 Similar regions occur in sub-tropical South Africa and in Northern Australia. 

 See Part I., Chap. v. 



