264 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



of tliis land the wheat will have to be more dearly bought by labour, 

 fertilisers, aud skill than on the land now being farmed. 



The potentialities of South America arc less easy of estimate, but in 

 this region there is still a great area of rich plain country unsettled, and 

 it is not too much to expect that another 40 million acres of land are 

 available for farming under present conditions. 



The potentialities of non-tropical Africa and of Australia are small ; 

 in the latter country the arid zone lies so near to the coast that the 

 additional area available for normal cultivation is negligible in considering 

 the world's need of food. The great unknown factor in this survey is 

 Western Siberia, a natural wheat area, and Manchuria. All that can be 

 said is that the physical possibilities are great, perhaps as high as 300 million 

 acres, but no one can guess when that will be realisable, dependent as it 

 is upon the establishment of a stable and ordered Government. Moreover, 

 on the flank of these regions hang the vast unsatisfied populations of China 

 and Japan, ever ready to expand as the means of sustenance permits, 

 and on this account the expectation of food for the Western peoples from 

 this area can be but small. It is noteworthy that the far-eastern 

 countries, so far from contributing to the food supply of the European 

 peoples, have themselves of late years become competitors for wheat in 

 the world market to an extent that has had a decisive effect upon 

 prices. 



As potential sources of food there still remain the tropical countries, 

 in particular Brazil and Central Africa, where abundant rainfalls and 

 high temperatures render feasible a very high level of production from 

 the soil. The last fifty years has witnessed remarkable examples of 

 organised production of tropical crops under western direction and 

 management. The growth of sugar in Java, Cuba, and Hawaii, of rubber 

 in Ceylon and the Straits, of tea in Ceylon and Assam, afford examples 

 of the possibilities of organised agriculture, employing the resources of 

 science, the labour-saving power of machinery, the criticism of cost book- 

 keeping, such as can rarely be paralleled in the farming proper of the 

 temperate regions. The same organisation is being extended to the 

 coconut, which as margarine is becoming one of the chief edible fats of 

 the world. Without doubt the tropics present enormous potentialities 

 of food production for the world, mainly in the direction of oil-seeds and 

 edible beans. It must, however, long remain uncertain to what extent 

 the cheap native labour upon which these tropical exploitations are 

 dependent will continue to be available. It does not appear to be possible 

 to maintain a white population itself engaged in the cultivation of the 

 soil in contact with native labour, and Queensland is the only tropical 

 country where agricultural development is being attempted with white 

 labour only. The lesson of S. Africa and to some extent of the southern 

 States of the U.S.A. would seem to be that the white races cannot expand 

 agriculturally in competition with the black. 



The present annual increment in the white population may be estimated 

 at about five millions. This, taken alone, would necessitate the taking 

 into cultivation of twelve million acres of new land every year. No 

 process of the kind is going on ; indeed, for many crops there has been 

 an actual shrinkage in the acreage since the war. Full records are not 

 available, but the following table shows the changes in the areas of some 

 o{ iho main crops : — 



