334 



More Wheat. 



[JULY, 



Urgent Need for an tncreated Arable Area. — The nation is in 

 urgent need of an increased acreage of land under the plough 

 in order to provide the greater production of food which is 

 possible on the arable land as compared with grass. In more 

 normal times it is not necessary that a large proportion of 

 that arable land shall be cropped with wheat, although on 

 ordinary soils wheat must always be a considerable item in 

 the rotation. The farmer will naturally grow the crops which 

 happen to pay best under the existing market conditions. 

 The essential feature is that the land shall be under the plough 

 and so producing on the higher level ; and, again, always 

 ready to turn over to wheat should the emergency arise. 

 That emergency is, however, in being for the next few years. 



As we have seen, the wheat production of the world is short 

 and the people must be fed. In consequence, for the next 

 few \'ears wheat is likely to pay as well as any other general 

 crop, and it is to the interests of the farmer as well as the com- 

 munity to set about an immediate increase in the wheat 

 acreage. 



It is a common argument that the acreage under wheat 

 in this country has more than reached its paying Hmit, that 

 in 1914, or thereabouts, all the land fit for wheat was carrying 

 that crop in the rotation, and that the remaining land was 

 of a class from which only an indifferent and unprofitable 

 crop could be expected, 3 instead of 4 quarter land. This idea, 

 however, that the bulk of the land in this country is unfit 

 for the growing of wheat, is not borne out by the past history 

 of agriculture. The acreage under wheat in 1869, the highest 

 year for which exact records exist, was 3,969,000 ; it had fallen 

 to 1,905,000 in 1914, rose again to 2,793,049 in 1918, but fell 

 to 2,370,367 in 1919, from which figure a further reduction 

 may be expected in the current year. 



Land on which the Wheat Area has declined since 1872. — Let US 

 examine the classes of land on which the shrinkage of acreage 

 since 1872 has chiefly taken place. In the first place it is 

 notorious that the very heavy clays in the south and east of 

 England, upon which good crops were grown before the great 

 depression, have ver^^ largely been laid or tumbled down to 

 grass because the heavy costs for labour involved in keeping 

 such land under the plough could not be paid for at the low 

 prices which prevailed for arable produce during the 'eighties 

 and 'nineties of last century. Some of this land was compulsoriiy 

 ploughed up during the War, but is now reverting to grass, 

 so much are farmers apprehensive of the great rise in the cost 



