I 



PART III. 



THE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION OF ANIMAL 

 FOODSTUFFS IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE. 



CHAPTER I. 



SURVEY OF PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION 

 WITHIN THE EMPIRE, 



T is proposed to deal in these chapters with the questions relating 

 to the production and the supplies of animal foodstuffs within 

 the Empire. We shall find in the course of the enquiry that the 

 British Empire, as a whole, is a deficiency area, and an endeavour 

 will be made to point out, as occasion arises, in which particular 

 ways the deficiency appears and what are the underlying causes. It 

 is obvious that, in the words of a prominent witness before the 

 Dominions Royal Commission in London, " the more dependent 

 England becomes upon imported meat, the more easy it is to be 

 controlled from outside." This refers particularly to sources of 

 supply outside the Empire, and the ideal (as yet far from realised) 

 is to render the Empire, as a whole, as much self-contained as 

 possible in its supplies of animal foodstuffs, 1 even though importa- 

 tions of animal feedstuffs in considerable quantities are almost 

 inevitable for some time to come. 



Examination shows that the production and the consumption 

 of animal foodstuffs within the Empire are both confined mainly 

 to the British Isles and the self-governing Dominions, that is, to 

 those parts inhabited by white people. The Crown Colonies and 

 the Protectorates, lying as they do, largely within the tropics, do 

 not call for consideration except as regards their actual or potential 

 production of feedstuff materials. 



Taken together, the United Kingdom and the Dominions have 

 enormous pastoral resources. Nevertheless the production of 

 animal foodstuffs within the Empire is by no means equal to the 

 consumption, as is shown by the following table of the net imports 

 of such articles into the United Kingdom from the rest of the 

 Empire and from foreign sources for the average of the three years 

 1911-13. 2 



1 Compare the following conclusion set forth by the Dominions Commission 

 in their Fifth Int. Report (Cd. 8457), p. 43 : "In our view the problem of 

 protecting and augmenting its meat supplies will be one of the most serious 

 which the Empire will have to face in the near future." 



2 The table has been compiled from material found in tables published by 

 the Dominions Commission (Cd. 8123). 



The imports of animal foodstuffs into the United Kingdom from foreign 

 countries represent fairly closely the Empire's deficiency, the exports from 

 the Dominions to foreign countries arfe small, and the imports equally small, 

 10 that one offsets the other. 



