ENGLAND'S FOOD-SUPPLY 17 



which the ground under cultivation is put at present, 

 to devote 8,000,000 acres to wheat, 16,000,000 acres 

 to general plough cultivation, and 24,000,000 acres 

 to grass. By these means England would be self- 

 supporting as regards her wheat-supply. 



It is not suggested that the situation is an easy 

 one to settle. Many complex interdependent factors 

 enter into it, fiscal, economic, social and practical, 

 and in times of peace a great deal of business and a 

 great deal of thought would be necessary before the 

 problem could be effectively approached. To-day, 

 however, the country is at war, and the food problem 

 is only second in urgency to that of maintaining our 

 armies at the front and of supplying them with 

 munitions. A single condition stands out with un- 

 mistakable clearness. The internal wheat-supply of 

 Great Britain must immediately be very considerably 

 increased. Abroad in times of peace our neighbours 

 have solved the problem of feeding their own popu- 

 lation by intensive cultivation, but whereas both 

 France and Germany use 105 pounds of artificial 

 fertilizers to the acre, England makes use only of 

 48 pounds to the acre. The need has now arisen 

 with exceptional urgency to get the utmost food 

 value possible out of the soil wheat for the direct 

 consumption of man, pasture and other foodstuffs 

 for the purposes of stock. And this exceptional need 

 has arisen at the very moment when the demand 

 on the world's stock of nitrates has attained a maxi- 

 mum hitherto undreamt of. It finds the British 

 soils at a dangerously low ebb in their available 

 supplies both of phosphates and of nitrates, and if 



