THE OUTLOOK 297 



bouring countries that are certainly not more favoured in soil and 

 climate. 1 It is maintained that the output in these directions 

 could be materially increased, if more land were under rotation 

 crops, without any marked increase becoming necessary in the 

 quantities of feedstuffs imported. 



Some changes could probably with advantage be made in the 

 distribution of resources among the various food-producing animals. 

 In particular, the United Kingdom is obviously understocked with 

 pigs and dairy cattle, both of which are more efficient converters 

 of feedstuffs into foodstuffs than beef-cattle and sheep, now so 

 prominent in numbers among British live-stock. The Corn- 

 Production Act of 1917 aims at increasing the acreage under cereals 

 mainly by the conversion of pastures to arable ; but there is no 

 reason why, as some suppose, the production of animal foodstuffs 

 in the United Kingdom should be diminished, even if the cereal 

 acreage is greatly increased. Rotation farming, under intensive 

 methods, is more favourable to animal industries than is the simple 

 grazing system ; and a widespread increase in cereal-cultivation 

 in the United Kingdom would certainly be favourable to an expan- 

 sion in the poultry-rearing industry, which is at present quite 

 unable to meet the requirements of the population in eggs. 



It is possible, therefore, that the deficiency of the United Kingdom 

 in cereals (including feedstuffs) and in animal foodstuffs may be 

 materially reduced in the future, provided sufficient agricultural 

 workers of the right kind are to be found. This, as we have seen, 

 may prove to be a serious difficulty in view of the competing attrac- 

 tions of the Dominions and of the towns in the United Kingdom 

 for able-bodied men. Nevertheless, it is hardly to be supposed, 

 even if the available land in the United Kingdom is made to pro- 

 duce the maximum of foodstuffs, that the country will ever be 

 able, on the present basis of consumption, to supply the whole of 

 its requirements. It was estimated that before the war the United 

 Kingdom produced about one-half of its total consumption of 

 foodstuffs, by values ; but it produced less than one-half of its 

 total consumption of animal foodstuffs by values when the imports 

 of feedstuffs are included with those of these articles. It appears 

 that in the future it will almost inevitably show some deficiency 

 in animal foodstuffs, in certain feedstuffs, and in wheat. Hopes 

 are, however, entertained that the deficiencies in these directions 

 will be more or less entirely supplied from the surplus production 

 of the rest of the Empire. Still the evidence at present available 

 points to the conclusion that it will be a long time before this is 

 accomplished, and that great progress in agricultural production, 

 and especially in animal industries, will have to be made in the 

 meantime throughout the Empire. 2 



1 See T. A. Middleton's Report on German and British Agriculture (Cd. 

 8305) ; Rowntree's Land and Labour, Lessons from Belgium ; Rider Hag- 

 gard's Rural Denmark. 



2 The production of meat per head of live-stock is much lower in the Over- 

 seas Dominions than in the United Kingdom, and it is thought by some author- 



