PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 671 
highest level of productivity per acre, just as it has attained its maximum 
population-carrying capacity. 
Now the Australian, like other farmers in new countries, is often reproached 
for the low yields per acre that he obtains—10 to 15 bushels of wheat per acre, 
as against 32 in England, and rather more in Holland and Belgium. Unfavour- 
able as is this comparison of Australia with Europe, still greater appears the 
superiority of China and Japan, though it cannot be reduced to statistics. But 
the Australian quite rightly replies by setting up another standard of com- 
parison; not the production per acre, but the production per man is his 
criterion, and on this basis the Australian farmer takes a very high position 
indeed. Against the productivity of the land when labour is unlimited he 
opposes the ideal of the productivity of the man when aided by machines and 
unlimited land. 
Organised large-scale farming supports far more people than the labourers 
actually employed on the land; it buys machines and raw materials like 
fertilisers, it pays rent and makes profits, all of which go to the support of other 
people, who are at bottom fed and maintained by the production from the land. 
I have calculated that the most highly cultivated farm with which I am 
acquainted in Britain, a farm selling merely meat, potatoes, and corn, would 
actually support people at the rate of over 1,000 per square mile, if they were 
to live at such a low subsistence level as that of the Oriental small farmers. 
The standard of living that in fact prevails is of course very different, but 
nevertheless, when all the exchanges of commodities and services against food 
are completed, that square mile of highly organised farm-land is the ultimate 
support of a population comparable with that resident on Eastern land even 
though the number of people actually tilling the soil is small enough. 
But even if the number of people maintained by a given area under Western 
conditions is far greater than would appear from those employed in cultivating 
the soil, there must come a time when the pressure of an increasing population 
will necessitate a much higher agricultural efficiency in the way of production 
of food per acre. Now, if we attempt to meet this pressure by subdivision 
of the land, attracted by the specious appearance of a large population sup- 
ported on the soil, the operation of competition will force them down to such 
a low standard of living as we find in China and Japan. A large number of 
men on the land does not necessarily make for more food for the community, 
because in practice we find that the standard of cultivation and production 
per acre of the small holder is actually below that of the larger farmer in the 
same class of business. For example, one thousand acres might be cultivated 
by twenty men, so as to produce as much food as if it were divided up and 
made to carry 200 men on five acres apiece; the community, considered as a 
whole, is richer in the former case by the labour of 180 men, labour that can 
be devoted to the production of other articles which the small holders would 
have to go without. Clearly, if twenty men can grow a maximum of food on 
the thousand acres, it is mere waste to employ 200 men about it, though, at 
first blush, in the latter case, the land seems to be carrying ten times more 
men. The only question is whether the intensive cultivation, which is more 
or less forced upon the two hundred holders of five acres, can be obtained when 
the area is cultivated, as a whole, by only twenty men. There is no lack of 
evidence that it can, but the means by which such large-scale farming can in 
the end beat mere grinding human labour, is by utilising to the full all the 
resources of science, machinery, and organisation. In fact, when the world 
becomes fully populated, the application of science to agriculture is the only 
method by which the community can be saved from falling into the Oriental 
condition of a community of labourers working incessantly for a bare subsistence. 
Now, we may ask ourselves what remains for science to do towards the 
improvement of agriculture. Practically everything. Agriculture is half as old 
as man; centuries of experience, of trial and error, of slowly accumulated obser- 
vations, are bound up in the routine of the commonest cultivation of the soil; 
the science applied to agriculture is at the outside little more than a century 
old, and so far has only partially succeeded in explaining and justifying existing 
practices. It is still in the reign of first approximations to the truth; these 
specious first approximations which so regularly break down when applied to 
