AGRICULTURAL SURVEY OF EUROPE I GERMANY 7 
The difference between the .pre-war per capita relationship of live- 
stock and the availbale quantity of forage per head of livestock in 
the Empire and in the territories now constituting the Republic was 
not great. However, meat was produced at a relatively lower rate 
in the Republic than in the Empire. At least 200,000",000 pounds 
of meats were shipped to the interior districts annually from the 
districts that were later segregated by the Versailles treaty. (See 
Table 59, p. 79.) 
The conclusion seems to be that had other factors remained un- 
changed, the total effect of the territorial changes brought about by 
the Versailles treaty would have been to reduce Germany's net ex- 
portable cereal surplus by not more than 10,000,000 bushels and the 
exportable sugar surplus by not more than 500,000 short tons and to 
increase meat imports by about 100,000 short tons. The relative 
situation of other agricultural products in the Republic would have 
remained practically the same as it had been in the Empire. 
THE PRESENT CRISIS IN GERMAN AGRICULTURE 
The reversal of the preferential agricultural tariff and legislation 
unfavorable to agriculture, the chaotic economic conditions following 
the war, and the influx of cheap agricultural products from American 
and other overseas countries have tended to cause German farmers to 
reduce the production of marketable- surpluses and to restrict their 
operations to a basis more nearly approaching self-sufficiency. The 
disproportion between the price that the farmer has received for his 
products and the price that he has had to pay for labor and the goods 
that he has required for the development of his business has been so 
great that he has not been able to obtain the cost of production on 
the poorer soils and, as a consequence, millions of acres of submarginal 
lands have gone out of cultivation. 
The feeding of livestock in Germany has always been restricted to 
a great extent to the quantities of feeding stuffs that could be produced 
at home, in addition to which large quantities of feeding barley, fish 
meal, oil cake, and other concentrates and cereals have had to be 
imported. The degree to which such feeds could be used with profit 
was restricted by their cost and the market price of meat. Although in 
recent years the areas devoted to hay, fodder beets, and potatoes 
have been increased above pre-war levels, the increased quantities of 
feeding stuffs thus produced at home have not been sufficient to main- 
tain cattle and swine on German farms up to their pre-war numbers, 
and meat and fat prices have not been high enough to enable the 
German farmers to import foreign concentrated feeding stuffs on a 
basis profitable to meat production. 
Added to these handicaps affecting the profitable production of 
marketable surpluses, the German demand for agricultural products 
has fallen off sharply as a result of the inability of the masses of the 
German people to maintain themselves at their former high standard 
of living. As Professor Sering states : 
Germany is exporting, expressed in terms of gold, only one-half of her pre-war 
volume. * * * Germany's ability to provide herself with the means of sub- 
sistence is correspondingly curtailed. The farmer of great exporting terril 
therefore, is the victim of the central European collapse. The purchasing power 
of his wheat and of his cattle in exchange for industrial goods has been reduced 
approximately to from 50 to 70 per cent of its pre-war power because of the 
depreciated equivalent which Germany is able to offer. * * * The disparity 
