1920.] 



Increasing Basic Slag Supplies. 



241 



THE NATIONAL ASPECTS OF THE 

 CASE FOR INCREASING THE SUPPLIES 

 OF BASIC SLAG.* 



Sir Thomas Middleton, K.B.E., 

 Development Commissioner . 



Food Produced by Soils of the United Kingdom.— From figures 

 published in the annual volumes of statistics issued by the Board 

 of Agriculture and Fisheries, and in the Report of the War 

 (Food) Committee of the Royal Society, it may be shown that 

 in the period before the War (1909-13) the soils of the United 

 Kingdom were supplying products which, measured in terms 

 of energy, would have sufficed for the support of about 

 17,500,000 persons. The whole population to be fed averaged 

 about 45,250,000 persons ; thus in each week the home supply 

 would have sufficed from Friday night until Monday morning. 



It is interesting to compare the position before the outbreak 

 of war with the condition of the food supply during the last 

 war in which the country was engaged. An examination of 

 our imports in the early part of the nineteenth century shows 

 that in 1801-10 the soils of the United Kingdom must have fed 

 on an average some 16,500,000 persons. After Waterloo there 

 was a rapid increase in our industrial population, and very great 

 enormous pressure on the means of subsistence. In the period 

 of reconstruction which followed the Napoleonic \\'ars the 

 fare of the nation may have been meagre and was, no doubt, 

 ill-distributed, and there was much hardship ; but viewed from 

 the standpoint of to-day, the feat performed by our farmers 

 during that period was astonishing. By 1835 they maintained 

 a population of 24,500,000 on the soils of the United Kingdom ; 

 m other words nearly 50 per cent, more than at the outbreak 

 of the Great War. 



Taking the soils of the United Kingdom as a whole, it m^y be 

 shown that before the \\'ai" farmers were providing for from 

 35 to 40 persons per 100 acres, and that in the period 1909-13. 

 rather fewer than 17 persons were actually supported by the 

 average 100 acres of our cultivated grass land. The ligure for 

 arable land, i.e., under other crops than grasses and clovers, 

 was calculated in 1916 at 84 persons per 100 acres.! 



* Contribution to a General Discussion on " Basic Slags : Their Production 

 and Utilisation in Agricultural and other Industries," held by The Faraday- 

 Society, Tuesday, 23r(l March, 1920, 



t The subject of the food supplies of the United Kingdom was discussed 

 in a paper by Sir Thomas Middleton, published in this Journal, March, 1920,. 

 p. 1 1 92, The figures given in that article may also be consulted. 



