1920.] 



Rural Economy at Oxford. 



275 



vision of a regenerated England is no baseless fabric. Dr. 

 Somerville, while admitting the immense possibilities of the 

 School, which he has done so much to establish, deals steadily 

 with hard facts. There are 26,000,000 acres of culti- 

 vated or cultivable land in England and Wales, and he 

 holds that a 20 per cent, improvement is possible. On 

 much of the grass land he looks to see a double quantity rnd 

 a double quality of production, so that where two sheep are 

 grazing to-day, four sheep may graze in seasons to come, each 

 doing twice as well as its predecessors. Dr. Somerville is taking 

 nothing for granted, and many old theories of production are 

 being put to a searching test. For example, he finds that on 

 some soils for which lime is recommended as a cure for sourness, 

 lime alone does not pay, and that a phosphatic manure must 

 be added. The spirit of inquiry, and the infinite possibilities 

 that may follow wise experiment, may, perhaps, account in part 

 for the fact that in the School of Agriculture and the Forestry 

 School there are now upwards of 2Co students, including 

 five women, and there are few, if any. Colleges in Oxford 

 at which it is not possible to find some students who hope to 

 take their degree in agriculture. 



The Institute for Research in Agricultural Economics was 

 estabhshed by the Development Commission through the 

 Ministry of Agriculture, and in spite of the extraordinary 

 difficulties that beset the keeping of farm-accounts, particularly 

 when an effort is being made to establish costs of cultivation, 

 Mr. Orwin can make out a very strong case for work on certain 

 definite fines. The Institute has already conducted inquiries 

 into costs of production, the agriculture of three counties 

 (Oxfordshire, Berks and Northants), the economic aspects of 

 small holdings and allotments, the expenditure on labour per 

 acre, and transport problems. It will never be possible to state 

 costs of production in terms of England and Wales, or in terms 

 even of a great part of either without doing injustice to the 

 majority of those concerned, because these costs naturally vary 

 in accordance with the nature of the soil, the method of culti- 

 vation, the competence or incompetence of the farmer, the 

 state of the weather, the difficulties of transport, the cost of 

 feeding stufts and artificial manures, and a host of other 

 questions that must occur to any man who has ever looked, 

 even to a few fields, for a return on his outlay and endeavour. 

 The question of the production that is best for a district is, 

 however, one that belongs to economics. 



It is possible to establish definitely the production per man 

 and per acre in any given area, and, eUminating the human 



