1920.] 



Our Xatioxal Food Supply. 



135 



tion Department during tlie War, and they had succeeded in 

 1917-18 in adding 1,150,000 acres to the area under the plough. 



The difficulty then was the lack of labour, horses, implements 

 and buildings, and the same difficulty faces us now, when it is 

 still the prime national interest to make our own land produce 

 as much as possible and buy as little as we can from abroad. 



The crux of the question is the amount of labour that arable 

 land requires, and its increasing cost., It was this factor which 

 above all others drove the land down to grass during the last 

 30 years of the Nineteenth Century. The value of the produce 

 of arable land was constantly falling until there was not enough 

 to pay for the cost of labour. Roughly speaking, 100 acres 

 of arable land require the labour of four men, whereas 100 

 acres of grass land will want at the most two men if milk is 

 being produced, and only half a man or less if cattle and sheep 

 are being grazed. The difficulty before the farmer that causes 

 him to hang back from increasing his arable area at the present 

 time is that the costs of labour have risen disproportionately 

 to the price of his produce. Before the War a farmer growing 

 an acre of wheat would get about £7 for the produce, out of 

 which he had to pay about 30s. for manual and 15s. for horse 

 labour. At the present time that 30s. has become lOOS., the 

 15s., 30s., whereas the 140s. has only become about 280s. 

 Even if his rent has not risen, the margin of profit can be no 

 higher than it was before, whereas the risks are of course very 

 much greater. By comparison the grass land is a much more 

 tempting proposition. On the grass land the labour only 

 amounts to 10 per cent, of the value of the produce instead of 

 30 per cent., or rather 45 per cent, including the horses, as it 

 does on the arable land. The available margin of profit when 

 the value of the produce has doubled is, therefore, much more 

 tempting than it was before. The chief factor of cost in grass 

 land farming is the rent of the land, and that has increased 

 but little. Labour is the chief factor of cost of arable land, and 

 that has trebled in cost. There is still a greater profit to be 

 obtained from arable land, but it is more speculative, harder 

 work, and demands more skill and enterprise on the part of the 

 farmer. Much as the nation needs arable land, in the present 

 uncertain conditions of prices and labour, the farmer will be 

 tempted towards grass land as long as the prices of corn, which 

 is the chief produce of arable land, are kept down. Land in 

 England is cheaper, especially rented land, than land in any 

 other part of the world, and this of itself is an inducement 

 to farm under grass. 



