THE SPIRIT OF THE SOIL 



These statistics are startling to anyone who has 

 the interests of the nation at heart, and the dis- 

 crepancy between the practice of Great Britain and 

 that of her great Continental neighbours stimulates 

 a further inquiry. There is a grave challenge to 

 British farming in the statement that only 3 per cent, 

 of our cultivated land is employed in growing wheat 

 as opposed to 25 per cent, in Germany and 30 per 

 cent, in France. 



The conditions have not always been the same as 

 they are to-day, and the gravity of the problem is 

 emphasized more clearly by a further comparison 

 made with other countries. During the last thirty 

 years in the countries mentioned below the total 

 acreage under cultivation has varied little, but the 

 attention paid to the growing of wheat has enor- 

 mously increased everywhere except in England* 

 where there has been a large fall in output, as is 

 shown from the following table : 



Germany has increased her wheat production 



France 



Russia 



Hungary 



Roumania 



Bulgaria 



25 per cent. 



7 

 90 



25 



33 



22 



While the output of the United Kingdom has fallen 30 



An attractive explanation of the situation would 

 be that the pressure of population in other countries 

 had forced into wheat cultivation land unsuited for 

 it, and that the increased acreage and increased 

 gross yield on the Continent was only obtained by 

 sacrifices of such an order that the farmers of this 

 country did not care to follow suit. An analysis of 



