274 
The Survival in Farming. 
period has increased, that of the United States and Canada has 
barely been maintained. Moreover, in the last five years, that 
of Australasia has increased by only about 200,000 acres, and 
the Indian acreage has fallen off. The wasteful cattle range 
and ranch systems of America, too, have been entirely unsuccess- 
ful of late, as is demonstrated by the fact that the number of 
cattle this year has failed to show an appreciable increase for the 
first time during twenty years, and population has been gaining 
ground upon cattle. Bearing in mind the fact that, during the 
past decade, millions of acres of new land in the United States 
and Canada, in which wheat is almost necessarily the first crop, 
have been occupied, and that, therefore, as the total acreage has 
been stationary, an area equal to that of the new land must have 
gone out of wheat cultivation, the unremunerativeness of wheat- 
growing in these countries may be considered proved. The 
whole tendency of farming in these countries is towards mixed 
husbandry and the production of fruit and culinary vegetables, 
and this means an advance in the direction of high farming, 
which will be accelerated with the rapid increase of population, 
at least in the United States. I do not agree with the prophets 
who predict that, in ten years, America will have ceased to ex- 
port grain and meat, because I believe that higher prices will 
induce better farming, which will increase the fertility of the 
soil and therefore the yield of crops, while meat will be produced 
on millions of farms under an economical system, instead of 
under the cheap, but wasteful, range and ranch systems. 
Is it credible, then, that while America is advancing towards 
the British system of farming, we, in this country, will retrograde 
in the direction of the present American system ? The answer 
is obviously a negative one. With the best markets in the 
world within easy reach, British farmers will find that their 
interests will lie in the production of the greatest quantity of 
the best of everything. The depression has taught them soine 
useful lessons in economy, one of the most important of which 
is that they cannot afibrd to bid recklessly against each other 
for farms. But the economy which will be practised will consist 
in the curtailing of wasteful business and personal expenditure, 
and not in the starving of their land. 
As to the size of farms, it will probably vary in the future as 
it has varied in the past. Large and small holdings have their 
respective advantages for various purposes and in different 
localities. In arable districts at least, and so far as the pro- 
duction of the oi-dinary crops of the farm is concerned, I do not 
believe that a holding not too extensive to be efficiently superin- 
tended by one man can be too large for the most economical 
