io AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATION 



The Transition in Agriculture. 



All these conditions, and others besides, led to an increased 

 need here, not only for greater efficiency, but also for a 

 greater variety, in agricultural production. It became 

 necessary that European growers who could no longer com- 

 pete, more especially, with foreign wheat should turn their 

 attention to other products instead, and such necessity led 

 to a period of transition in which alternatives to wheat- 

 growing were widely adopted, among those alternatives 

 being stock-breeding, the raising of market-garden produce, 

 fruit culture, and the sale of milk, butter, cheese, eggs and 

 poultry. 



Urban Life. 



Such transition was, in turn, greatly fostered by the 

 altered conditions of urban life. 



The transformation in the industrial position owing to 

 the invention of new processes of manufacture, the setting 

 up of the factory system, and the migration of population 

 from the rural districts to the towns had both discouraged 

 the practice of the older forms of agriculture at home and 

 opened out still greater possibilities to the wheat-growers 

 abroad ; but the same transformation had also led to the 

 grouping together of collections of humanity which could, 

 indeed, no longer grow their own food supplies on their 

 own holdings, yet stood in need of commodities besides 

 wheat or bread, and especially of vegetables, fruit, milk, 

 butter, cheese, and bacon. 



The furnishing of these other commodities offered scope 

 for the enterprise and energy of cultivators unable to 

 compete with the foreign wheat-grower, while the tran- 

 sition in agriculture thus brought about further meant 

 an increase of opportunity for the working farmer and the 

 small holder — especially under conditions of intensive culti- 

 vation — notwithstanding the increasing discouragement for 

 the gentleman farmer whose broad acres had been devoted 

 in the past to the production of corn crops. 



These newer possibilities of the situation became greater 



