"Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread.' 



413 



Jersey, even, which the popular imagination 

 pictures as a fertile land flowing with milk and 

 honey, and whose enormous exports of agri- 

 cultural produce do nothing to dispel this 

 illusion, the soil, which consists of decomposed 

 granite, with no organic matter in it, is not at 

 all of astonishing fertility, and its climate, 

 though more sunny than the climate of these 

 isles, offers many drawbacks on account of the 

 small amount of sun-heat during the summer 

 and of the cold winds in spring. But so it is in 

 reality, and at the beginning of this century the 

 inhabitants of Jersey lived chiefly on imported 

 food. The fertility of the American soil also 

 had been grossly exaggerated, as the masses of 

 wheat which America sends to Europe from its 

 north-western farms are grown on a soil the 

 natural fertility of which is not higher, and 

 often lower, than the average fertility of the 

 unmanured European soil. 



AGRICULTURAL DECLINE INEXCUSABLE. 



All this seems to make agricultural decline 

 in this country seem more incomprehensible, less 

 excusable. It also gives confidence for the 

 future success of agriculture in the United King- 

 dom. What is needed is realisation, and appli- 

 cation, since the modern husbandman makes his 

 own soil ; breeds giant wheats with more ears, 

 more berries to the ear, and berries double the 

 size of the ordinary wheat ; he breeds into his 

 wheat the faculty of resisting disease, and forces 

 it to germinate more quickly and ripen sooner. 

 He breeds vast legions of bacteria to work for 

 him in thf- soil and enrich it with nitrogen, the 

 principal food of the wheat plant ; at will he 

 creates warmth or prevents frost. 



FIGURES OF Britain's agriculture. 



Let us glance for -a moment at the actual 

 figures of the decline of British agriculture, 

 prefacing them by remarking that the term 

 " unculfivable " land is a purely arbitrary expres- 

 sion, which includes much land far superior, 

 actually or potentially, than is under cultivation 

 in other countries. 



Total Area of Great Britain 



,, that cannot be cultivated 



WHAT OF OUR RIVALS? 



How is it with other countries? Here the 

 average yield per acre for arable land is ;£,3 3s. 

 annually, while for pasture land it is under los. 

 Nor must it be overlooked that whereas the 

 Belgian and German peasant cultivates every 

 yard of soil, we treat only the best land as 

 arable. The result is that our averages are 

 inflated while their averages are depressed. 



In Germany the cultivated area is 79,580,000 

 acres, and the population 60,641,278. The total 

 production of foodstuffs is ;;£J4 17,000,000, and 

 the yield per acre is ;^5 5s. Belgium has an 

 area of cultivated land about 4,000,000 acres ; 

 value of home-grown foodstuff, ;^8o,ooo,ooo ; 

 average yield per acre, ;^20. Denmark affords 

 surprising figures. The area of cultivated land 

 about 6,973,000 acres; value of home-grown 

 foodstuff, ;j40,ooo,ooo ; this gives an average 

 yield of just under ;^,"6 per acre. During the 

 past ten years the amount of home-grown food- 

 stuff has increased by 30 per cent. Average 

 yield of wheat per acre is forty bushels. The 

 average land in Denmark is much poorer than 

 that in England, and the climate is more severe. 



France produces ;^I3 of foodstuff per head of 

 her population, Germany ;^j los., England 



£'i MS- 

 WHEAT YIELDS HERE AND IN FRANCE. 



Turning to the great question of wheat, we 

 find that whereas it was possible to raise twenty- 

 eight bushels per acre of good land in this 

 country, the tendency is downwards and not up- 

 wards. This, however, is not the case in 

 France. Half a century ago the French con- 

 sidered a crop quite good when it yielded 

 twenty-two bushels to the acre ; but with the 

 same soil the present requirement is at least 

 thirty-three bushels, while in the best soils the 

 crop is good only when it yields from forty-three 

 to forty-eight bushels, and occasionally the pro- 

 duct is as much as fifty-five bushels to the acre. 



There are many examples as to how the wheat 

 yield per acre can be enormously increased, and 



56,000.000 acres. 



24 000 000 ., 



Cultivable Area 



32,000.000 



Applied in 1885 and 1910 as follows: — 



Cultivated Crops — 1885. 



Under all corn crops, including wheat 8,392.000 acres. 



Under all Rrc-n crops, including potatoes 3.522.000 ,, 



Clover and rotation grasses 4,654,000 



Total 



Horned Cattle 



Sheep 



• The balance in permanent pasture, except some 500,000 acres given up 10 rcrhards, hops and fruits. 



16,568,000 acres. 



6,598,000 

 26,534,600 



1910. 

 6,558,509 acres. 

 3.376,226 .. 

 4,157,000 ., 



•14,091.735 acres. 



7,037,000 

 27,102.900 



