M. — ^AGRICULTURE. 201 



As a set-off against the relative smallness of the acreage brought 

 during the war under intensive cultivation for food purposes, it is to be 

 remembered that the yields per acre obtained by intensive cultivators 

 arc remarkably high. For example, skilled onion-growers compute 

 their average yield at something less than 5 tons to the acre. A 

 chrysanthemum -grower who turned his resources from the production 

 of those flowers to that of onions obtained over an area of several acres 

 a yield of 17 tons per acre. The average yield of potatos 

 under farm conditions in England and Wales is a little over 6 tons to 

 the acre, whereas the army gardeners in France produced, from Scotch 

 seed of Arran Chief which was sent to them, crops of 14 tons to 

 the acre. Needless to say, such a rate of yield as this is not remarkable 

 when compared with that obtained by potato-growers in tiie 

 Lothians or in Lincolnshire, but it is nevertlieless noteworthy as an 

 indication of what I think may be accepted as a fact, that the average 

 yields from intensive cultivation are about double those achieved by 

 extensive methods. 



The reduction of the acreage under soft fruits — strawberries, rasp- 

 berries, currants, and gooseberries — w*hich took place during the 

 war gives some measure of the sacrifices — partly voluntary, partly 

 involuntary — made by fruit-gix3wers to the cause of war-food produc- 

 tion. The total area under soft fruits was 65,560 acres in 1913, 

 by 1918 it had become 42,415, a decrease of 13,145 acres, or about 

 24 per cent. As would be expected, the reduction was greatest in the 

 case of strawberries, the acreage of which fell from 21,692 in 1913 to 

 13,143 in 1918, a decrease of 8,549 acres, or about 40 per cent. It is 

 unfortunate that bad causes often have best propagandas, for were the 

 public made aware of such facts as these they would realise that the 

 present high prices of soft fruits are of the nature of deferred premiums 

 on war-risk insurances with respect to which the public claims were 

 paid in advance and in full. 



I should add that the large reduction of the strawberry acreage is a 

 measure no less of the short-sightedness of officials than of the public 

 spirit of fruit-growers; for in the earlier years of the war many 

 counties issued compulsory orders requiring the grubbing up and 

 restriction of planting of fruit, and I well remember that one of my 

 first tasks as Controller of Horticulture was to intervene with the object 

 of convincing the enthusiasts of corn production that, in war, some 

 peace-time luxuries become necessaries and that, to a sea-girt island 

 beset by submarines, home-grown fruit most certainly falls into this 

 category. 



Those who were in positions of responsibiHty at that time will not 

 readily forget the shifts to which they were put to secure and preserve 

 supplies of any sorts of fruit which could be turned into jam — the 

 collection of blackberries, the installation of pulping factories which 

 Mr. Martin and I initiated, and the rushing of supplies of scarcely set 

 jam to great towns, the populace of which, full of a steadfast fortitude 

 in the face of military misfortune, was ominously losing its sweetness 

 of disposition owing to the absence of jam and the dubiousness of the 

 supply and quality of margarine. 



