2SO 



SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



One cautionary statement I must make before I go further. When 

 speaking here, I do so entirely as a private individual and not as an official ; 

 the department to which I belong is in no way responsible for this address 

 and must not be held as necessarily agreeing with anything it contains. 



For purposes of definition, it is desirable to show, as concisely as 

 possible, the part occupied by agriculture in the economic structure of the 

 State. The following tables give the essential facts relating to areas, 

 holdings and populations, the output of food from our farms, and the con- 

 tribution they make to the total food consumption of the people. As a 

 matter of interest, corresponding figures are given for two other countries, 

 Denmark and Norway, which are more agricultural and less industrial 

 than Great Britain. These tables have been very kindly prepared for 

 me by Mr. W. H. Senior. Most of the data relating to Denmark have 

 been obtained from Professor O. H. Larsen, and those for Norway from 

 Professor Paul Borgedal ; I am much indebted to these gentlemen for 

 their kindness and courtesy. 



The chief facts to note here are the familiar ones, brought out in the 

 last two lines, that in Great Britain the number of persons per acre of 

 cultivated land, 1-5, is relatively high, being three times as many as in 

 Denmark and nearly half as many again as in Norway, while the per- 

 centage of the population engaged in British agriculture, about 6 per cent., 

 is very low as compared with 20 or 30 per cent, in the other two countries. 

 Notwithstanding the importance and value of our industrial development, 

 this figure of 6 per cent, has social and other implications which have 

 exercised the minds of many people and need not be elaborated here. 



This table shows that, as is again fairly well known, the products of 

 our animal husbandry account for a very large proportion of the output of 



