232 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



he produces live-stock of special merit; it is largely for the foreign 

 and not for the home market. Often his farming operations are based 

 upon his ambition to gain public distinction by excelling as a profes- 

 sional exhibitor of prize stock at the leading agricultural shows, without 

 any effort on his part to make such stock a medium for the improve- 

 ment of the ordinary commercial stock of the country, or even of his 

 own locality. One result of this is a marked and growing gap between 

 the finest British live-stock, which may be reckoned as the best in the 

 world, and the average live-stock of the ordinary commercial farmer, 

 which is probably lagging behind the average standard now attained 

 in many Continental countries. 



Although in soil and climate the land of Great Britain can com- 

 pare favourably with most of the cultivated land on the Continent, 

 the Continental landowner derives as a rule a net income of 

 from 31. to 4Z. per acre, as compared with IL per acre in the United 

 Kingdom. Moreover, the Continental landowner so manages his wood- 

 lands that they yield, generally speaking, an annual average net profit 

 at least equal to the rental of the agricultural land, and often very 

 much more. 



Sir James Caird (the advocate of more liberal covenants in tenancy 

 agreements) more than sixty years ago sounded the trumpet of warning 

 in relation to the threatening decadence of British agriculture, which, 

 however, passed unheeded by the bulk of those best able to profit by 

 and act upon it.^ England's period of greatest agricultui-al depression, 

 which followed twenty years later, synchronised with that of Germany's 

 greatest agricultural enterprise. From that time the latter's agricultural 

 progress, based on ascertained knowledge widely and wisely diffused, was 

 steady and continuous. Germany's food- weapons during the late War 

 were at least as deadly as her military weapons, and the fact that the 

 former did not ultimately triumph cannot be placed to the credit of 

 British landlordism. Fas est et ab lioste doceri. Owing to lack of 

 enterprise and to the non-utilisation of scientific discovery the number^ 

 of persons fed from 100 acres of cultivated land in Great Britain prior 

 to the War fell far short of those fed from the same area in Germany,' 

 while the average crop yields of Great Britain have for a generation 

 been below those of Belgium and Denmark, although none of the three j 

 can boast of a soil and climate more conducive to agricultural 

 productivity. The same British acreage could well be made to produce 

 at least twice the present output of human and animal food. That 

 England should have 55 per cent, of her cultivable land under pasture as 

 compared with only 18 per cent, in Germany is not creditable to the 

 former. In Germany the occupier, if he is not also the owner, demands 

 and enjoys the benefits of a long lease. Moreover, game preserving there 

 is on a relatively small scale, and subsei'vient to the paramount claims of 



2 It is singular to note that Caird, in the preface to his exhaustive survey 

 of British farming, selects for special emphasis two defects, (1) the lack of land- 

 owners' initiative, and (2) the non-utilisation of sewage in promoting fertility. 

 There is still room for land improvement from both sources. 



* ' The Recent Development of German Agriculti^re,' by Sir Thomas 

 Middleton [Cd. 8305], 1916. 



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