M.—AGRICULTURE. 241 
machinery and any other aids to production. Results soon appeared. 
When Hall, in the years 1910-1912, made his classical pilgrimage of 
British farming, he records as his general impression that ‘the industry 
is at present sound and prosperous. . . . Rents have definitely risen with 
the demand for land that cannot be satisfied, and in all parts of the 
country men are obtaining very large returns indeed on the capital they 
embarked in the business.’ This was less than twenty years after the 
deep depression of the early ‘nineties ! 
Then came the war. For the English countryside (so far as any men 
were left), for the overseas Empire and the United States, it was a time 
of feverish activity to raise more food to sell to the Allies. Prices were 
fixed in England, so that money never abounded in the countryside as 
it had done in Napoleonic times. In spite of the sadness of the war years 
the farmers of Great Britain put up a wonderful fight to produce food. 
_ The history of the time has been written by Middleton.® After the war 
- came three years of high prices; in 1920 wheat averaged 80s. 10d. per 
quarter, the highest since 1818. Then just as suddenly there came the 
slump; by 1922 wheat was down to 47s. 10d. The high prices had done 
_ farmers very little good, and in the end they lost all that they had gained. 
Many landowners proceeded to sell their estates. The high price of 
produce induced many to bid for the land, and the sitting tenant had 
_ either to outbid or be dispossessed. Frequently he had to pay more in 
interest on loans and mortgages than he had paid in rent, and in addition 
he has also to maintain the buildings, gates and roads which formerly the 
estate had done; moreover, as a landowner he has incurred the hearty 
dislike of some of the town dwellers, who now promise him extra taxation. 
_ He is therefore in a far worse position than the farmer of 1821 in the 
slump after the high prices of the Napoleonic wars. But much worse 
has come. When the first rush of cleaning up after the Great War was 
over it was realised that the world’s power of producing food had grown 
_ far in excess of its power of consuming food. The population had 
_ inereased but the power of food production had increased much more. 
_ In consequence, prices of farm produce have fallen far more than costs of 
r labour and of other commodities. British farmers have turned, as in the 
_ 1890's, to livestock, raising lamb, young pigs and milk as far as possible 
on grass with an increasing acreage of lucerne, thanks to the success of 
_ Thornton’s inoculation method. Those who cannot produce grass cheaply 
_ and easily, but who have to depend on arable land, are in a sorry plight, 
and the difficulty is not confined to this country; arable farmers in all 
_ civilised countries are deeply depressed. 
This certainly is not the result that was expected ; on the contrary, 
experts had confidently predicted a food shortage. Sir William Crookes, 
in his presidential address to the Association in 1898, forecasted the 
probable world requirement of wheat for the next three decades, and 
_ showed that the sources and methods then available would continue to 
_ suffice only till 1931, when the world would begin to feel the pinch 
of hunger. It seemed a tragic ending to the magnificent triumphal 
march of the nineteenth century. Crookes’ figures wete remarkably 
7 8 Food Production in War: Oxford (Carnegie Endowment). 
1931 R 
