THE FOOD PROBLEM 5 



apparently hopeless morass an agricultural 

 industry that is our envy. In Egypt the Nile 

 has been harnessed by a colossal feat of human 

 enterprise ; and nature's irresponsible floods 

 are now controlled at stated seasons to irrigate 

 a fertile plain. Holland and Belgium have 

 built walls against the encroaching sea, and 

 for their respective areas their agriculture is 

 the richest in the world. But we have had to 

 wage no war against adverse surroundings. 

 Our chmate is moderate ; we have to combat 

 neither arctic frost nor tropical heat. Many 

 generations of capital expenditure by landlords 

 and tenants have made the raw material, the 

 land, one of the richest and most fertile in the 

 world. Occasionally it has been necessary to 

 drain large areas, but the country as a whole 

 has had to overcome no geographical difficulty 

 to secure a sound foundation for a prosperous 

 agricultural industry. 



On the other hand, the demand for food 

 in this country is far in excess of our home 

 supply. Even the most sanguine will admit 

 that for the future we must mainly be fed by 

 large importations of food-stuffs from else- 

 where. A hundred years ago we were in a 



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