M.— AGRICULTURE. 239 



achieved. The Empire Marketing Board in two and a half years has 

 made grants up to the end of 1928 aggregating a million and a half. The 

 spread of these grants as seen from the map and table are interesting. A 

 tine example of what has already been done in Imperial team work is 

 offered by the Grassland Research. 



The headquarters of this research is in Aberdeen and the Chief of 

 Staff is Dr. Orr. Under his direction, teams have been investigating the 

 mineral deficiencies of pastures in Kenya, in the Falkland Islands, in 

 Palestine and in Scotland and England. Arising out of these investiga- 

 tions and those of Sir Arnold Theiler, similar campaigns have been started 

 in Australia and New Zealand. Here, in the space of only two or three 

 years, we have through vision and stafi work an Imperial Investigation 

 which promises to increase enormously the output of beef and mutton 

 from Imperial grasslands. 



As a result of these pasture researches the workers engaged have 

 been in consiiltation with each other and a spontaneous tendency to 

 co-operation is bearing fruit. In consequence, the pioneer work of 

 Onderstepoort is known and appreciated in Great Britain and elsewhere 

 and is being applied successfully. The work of Aston in New Zealand 

 on ' Bush sickness ' is being applied in East Africa. The Canadian work 

 on the prevention of goitre in grazing animals is a stimulus to work in 

 other countries such as Australia and New Zealand where there is believed 

 to be a deficiency of iodine in the pastures. If similar developments 

 can take place in other lines of research there is a possibility of great 

 advances during the lifetime of the present geneiation. 



I hope I have said enough to show that the application of science and 

 commonsense to the development of the Empire, and particularly of its 

 agriculture, promises rich rewards. 



New Adjustments.- 



As it seems probable that great adjustments will need to be made 

 in methods of agriculture, and in the organisation of supplies, it seems 

 essential that while we have the time we should think Imperially and 

 think ahead. The International Economic Congress at Geneva in 1927 

 diagnosed the depressed condition of European agriculture as being due to 

 unremunerative prices. The Congress negatived the conclusion that the 

 fall in prices was due to any excess of production. It was, on the con- 

 trary, of opinion that, relatively to the growth of population, there has 

 been no increase in output over that of 1913. With this opinion Sir 

 Daniel Hall, as shown by his address at Oxford in 1926, would agree. 



Lord Ernie, the Minister of Agriculture during the war, said recently : 

 ' The question has already arisen how far it is safe in the world's interests 

 to allow the decline of agriculture. Workers once attracted to the towns 

 never return. Inevitably, in course of time, whether sooner or later it 

 is impossible to predict, nations will be feverishly striving to rehabilitate 

 agriculture under the overmastering influence of food shortage.' 



This opinion of Lord Ernie's may be somewhat pessimistic, but local 

 famines do occur. In Kenya there was a partial famine this year. 

 Famines are recurrent in India, and many thousand people in Ireland 

 <lied of famine less than a hundred years ago. 



