1202 



Farming in Peace and in War. 



[mar., 



pork) we may have lost, because of this shortage in fodder (but 

 probably did not lose) as much as 100,000 tons of meat. After 

 making a deduction for this loss, the net gain in 191 8 repre- 

 sented 1,633,000 tons of human food. To bring this food into 

 the country it would have been necessary to charter vessels 

 having an aggregate capacity of 2,300,000 shipping tons of 

 40 cubic feet. 



These changes, it will readily be understood, were not secured 

 without a very great deal of work which fell not only upon 

 farmers themselves and their men, but also on members and 

 officers of the Agricultural Executive Committees, and on the 

 staff of the Food Production Department. 



The following figures will indicate the scale on which the 

 Central Department was organised. Starting with some 30 

 permanent officers of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, 

 a staff of about 1,000 was employed in 1918. Before the end of 

 1 91 8 the controlled labour suppKed to Agricultural Executive 

 Committees through the Department included 118,000 persons, 

 of whom 72,000 were soldiers, 30,000 prisoners of war, 4,000 

 war volunteers, and 11,500 Land Army women. By this 

 time, too, the Department owned 4,200 tractors and 10,000 

 horses, with many thousands of implements and sets of harness. 

 In addition a great deal of work was done in supplying fertilisers, 

 distributing seeds, and providing such necessaries as binder 

 twine. 



The cost of all this work was necessarily high, but there was 

 much more than a direct return in the value of the extra crops 

 secured ; crops which, but for the action of the Department, 

 would never have been grown : and, needless to say, it was not 

 for a pecuniary profit, but as an insurance against the risk 

 of starvation that the Department was established. 



Could the United Kingrdom become self-supporting^ ? — It is 

 sometimes stated that given suitable encouragement by the 

 State, and an ample supply of machinery and manures, the soil 

 of this country might provide us with all the bread-stuffs we 

 require, and at the same time maintain the present production 

 of milk, beef, and mutton. 



Let us examine this view, first, as a Peace proposition. 

 Assuming that by good farming we could not only largely 

 extend the area under corn, but maintain the existing average 

 production of the soils of the United Kingdom, the figures in 

 Table IV. show the area that would be required to provide us 

 with all the cereal grain (except rice and certain millets) used 

 in the United Kingdom in the period 1909-13. 



