October 28, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



563 



that in case of war with any of the Great 

 Powers wheat would be contraband, as if 

 it were cannon or powder, liable to capture 

 even under a neutral flag. We must, there- 

 fore, accept the situation and treat wheat 

 as munitions of war, and grow, accumulate 

 or store it as such. It has been shown that 

 at the best our stock of wheat and flour 

 amounts only to 64,000,000 bushels — four- 

 teen weeks' supply— while last April our 

 stock was equal to only 10,000,000 bushels, 

 the smallest ever recorded by ' Beerbohm ' 

 for the period of the season. Similarly, the 

 stocks held in Europe, the United States 

 and Canada, called ' the world's visible sup- 

 ply,' amounted to only 54,000,000 bushels, 

 or 10,000,000 less than last year's sum-total, 

 and nearly 82,000,000 less than that of 1893 

 or 1894 at the corresponding period. To 

 arrest this impending danger, it has been 

 proposed that an amount of 64,000,000 

 bushels of wheat should be purchased by 

 the State and stored in national granaries, 

 not to be opened, except to remedy deteri- 

 oration of grain, or in view of national dis- 

 aster rendering starvation imminent. This 

 64,000,000 bushels would add another four- 

 teen weeks' life to the population ; assum- 

 ing that the ordinary stock had not been 

 drawn on, the wheat in the country would 

 only then be enough to feed the population 

 for twenty-eight weeks. 



I do not venture to speak authoritatively 

 on national granaries. The subject has been 

 discussed in the daily press, and the re- 

 cently published report from the Agricul- 

 tural Committee on National Wheat Stores 

 brings together all the arguments in favor 

 of this important scheme, together with the 

 difiBculties to be faced if it be carried out 

 with necessary completeness. 



More hopeful, although diflScult and cost- 

 ly, would be the alternative of growing most, 

 if not all, of our own wheat supply here at 

 home in the British Isles. The average 



yield over the United Kingdom last year 

 was 29.07 bushels per acre, the average for 

 the last eleven years being 29.46. For 

 twelve months we need 240,000,000 bushels 

 of wheat, requiring about 8,250,000 acres of 

 good wheat-growing land, or nearly 13,000 

 square miles, increasing at the rate of 100 

 square miles per annum, to render us self- 

 supporting as to bread food. This area is 

 about one-fourth the size of England. 



A total area of land in the United King- 

 dom equal to a plot 110 miles square, of 

 quality and climate sufficient to grow wheat 

 to the extent of 29 bushels per acre, does 

 not seem a hopeless demand.* It is doubt- 

 ful, however, if this amount of land could 

 be kept under wheat, and the necessary ex- 

 pense of high farming faced, except under 

 the imperious pressure of impending star- 

 vation or the stimulus of a national sub- 

 sidy or permanent high prices. Certainly 

 these 13,000 square miles would not be 

 available under ordinary economic condi- 

 tions, for much, perhaps all, the land now 

 under barley and oats would not be suitable 

 for wheat. In any case, owing to our cold, 

 damp climate and capricious weather, the 

 wheat crop is hazardous, and for the pres- 

 ent our annual deficit of 180,000,000 bush- 

 els must be imported. A permanently 

 higher price for wheat is, I fear, a calamity 

 that ere long must be faced. At enhanced 

 prices land now under wheat will be bet- 

 ter farmed, and therefore will yield better, 

 thus giving increased production without 

 increased area. 



The burning question of to-day is: What 

 can the United Kingdom do to be reasonably 

 safe from starvation in presence of two suc- 

 cessive failures of the world's wheat harvest, 

 or against a hostile combination of Euro- 

 pean nations ? We eagerly spend millions 



*The total area of the United Kingdom is 120,979 

 square miles ; therefore the required land is about a 

 tenth part of the total. 



