November 9, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
!• 
by a paternal Government obliged to open their arms, as 
in (Germany. 
Denmark's genius seized chietiy upon the economics 
of food production, and she has thus become' famous for 
her almost perfect organisation of prodiiction, distribution, 
and credit on co-operative lines. She saw a rich market 
for all the surplus food she might produce, and she s^et 
herself to produce it. It was a brave fight, for on the 
whole the conditions of the struggle were not exactly 
favourable to the Danish side. The English farmers were 
well entrenched in their own market, with the North Sea 
as a moat ; their land and climate greatly superior to that of 
the attackers ; popular prejudice was in favour of " Real 
Home Farm Produce," and the market was at their back 
door. But the waste in the processes of production and dis- 
tribution was gigantic, both here and in Denmark. It 
was therefore only in this field that a thrifty and well- 
educated race like the Danes might hope to gain an 
advantage over us ; and their practising of the " gospel 
of the EUmination of Waste through Co-operation," as 
preached by their lecturers in economics, did in the end 
beat us, as 'the Danish eggs and bacon and butter on our 
breakfast table will testify. 
Germany on her part with her ponderous thoroughness, 
went " the whole hog " in applied science, thus making 
her agriculture an example in scientific organisation, 
second only to that of the British Navy, which is the 
greatest instance in the world, as all the world knows 
now. Her rulers knew what they were about, and laid 
their plans accordingly. The crop she was out to grow 
were strong men and healthy women to be the mothers 
of strong men, and these are only to be grown on the 
land. Science indicated a hundred ways to grow them ; 
increasing the yield per acre, reclaiming waste land, in- 
creasing the live stock and improving its value, estab- 
lishing numberless subsidiary industries : each one of these 
actions meant so many more people supported by the 
land, so much more wealth produced — chiefly extracted 
from the air, as taught by the scientist- — and so many 
more fighters by the time they would be wanted. 
Agricultural Populations 
Here is a little illustration that will visualise to the 
reader the results of this profound and far-seeing policy. 
Think of a chess board. Let its 64 squares represent the 
area of the British Empire — one-fifth of the entire surface 
of the whole globe. Now, size for size, to use an American 
phrase, you could drop into that vast space the whole 
of Germany and lose it — for it would occupy just a little 
more than one square. But here is the rub : the total 
white agricultural population of this whole huge Empire 
is over 6,000,000 less than the agricultural population 
of, the tiny spot Germany. The actual figures are : — 
British Empire . . . . . , 13,400,000 
Germany . . . . . . . . 20,000,000 
Before the war I saw it stated somewhere that Germany 
was " conquering the air through her agriculture." It is 
certainly true that her extraordinary power of resistance 
rests on her agriculture : that her agriculture has been 
built up on potatoes and sugar beet, and that both, in the 
hands of the German farmers, reinforced by the scientists, 
are means for extracting from the atmosphere certain 
substances which are present in it in inexhaustible quan- 
tities, and for transforming them into articles of commerce 
for which there is an enormous and ever-growing demand : 
starch, sugar, alcohol, and other derivatives of the 
carbo-hydrates. 
Science enabled Germany to change things of no value 
into things of value, and to exchange them for other 
things of value, as, for instance, sugar for Welsh steam 
coal (for her men-of-war). On the face of it there does 
not seem much difference in value between £1,000,000 
of coal and £1,000,000 of sugar, or starch, or potato spirit. 
But if we look below the surface we find that in exchanging 
coal for an equal value of the other three we drew, as it 
were, a cheque from a diminishing banking account, 
while Germany drew her cheque from an unlimited credit. 
There is no other industry than agriculture which can 
go on forever producing values out of nothing — to be 
correct, create wealth with raw material, 90 per cent, of 
which is obtained from the atmosphere ; and one cannot 
but admire Germany's wide outlook and wisdom displayed 
in conceiving the vast possibilities of an agriculture 
industrialised on a scientific basis, liowever much we 
condemn the ultimate purpose for which she has employed 
them. It is such a wide outlook concerning the interrel- 
ation of factors apparently as far apart as profitable 
farming and the stability of the Empire that we need 
above all things. And here we may again " learn from 
the enem^'." 
Potatoes 
In the United Kingdom wnere our outlook in potato 
production seems to be confined within the four walls of 
" boiled, baked, fried, and mashed," we are going on 
from year to year producing about just enough (after 
allowing for seed potatoes and for loss of rotting) to 
supply our table — with the waste for the pig trough. 
A certain class of agricultural journalists calls this " the 
nicely adjusted balance between supply and demand " : 
hence our production of potatoes varies very little ; 
according to the Board of Trade it was 5,726,000 tons in 
IQ13, and 5,634,000 tons in 1893. In Germany the yield 
of potato acreage in 1893 was 27,539,000 tons — roughly 
five times as much as ours. In 1913, again according 
to our Board of Trade figures, it had risen to 49,463,000 
tons — roughly nine times as much as our rate of pro- 
duction. 
To anyone whose view is hmited by the skin of the 
potato, so to speak, Germany's huge potato harvest 
should by rights involve the German farmer every year in 
utter ruin, seeing that their market for table potatoes 
could only do with less than a fourth of this enormous 
bulk. Yet the retribution which, according to some of 
our men of agricultural " light and leading," should fall 
upon them for violating the sacred " law of supply and 
demand," somehow regularly fails to overtake them. 
The solution of the mystery is to be found in our Consular 
reports and the " Statistical Abstract for the United 
Kingdom." 
The denouement began indeed years ago with the 
.chemist to whose analytical mind the potato represents 
the contents of six test tubes, containing water, starch, 
protein, fat, ash, and crude fibre. The starch, protein, 
and fat he knew were exactly the same substance which 
has to be brought from abroad under different disguises 
(maize, " cake," grain, etc.), to be used in the building up 
of beef, mutton, pork, fowl, milk, eggs, etc., or in the form 
of starch for a dozen domestic and a score of manufactur- 
ing purposes. Starch again was known to him as a 
source of alcohol, dextrose and other derivatives ; and 
the enterprising manufacturers soon saw an opportunity 
of selling to the guileless English consumer potato flour 
in the various disguises of " corn " flour, artificial sago, 
the elusive macaroni and vermicelli, and other articles 
of food. 
What indeed the German chemist did with his micros- 
copes and test tubes and balances and the rest of his 
paraphernalia was to give to German agriculture a new 
soul (however much we may cavil at the word in this con- 
nection) ; and the prosaic act of dissecting and dis- 
integrating the potato started a train of processes which 
might well be called the Romance of the Potato Industry. 
Fate has now placed in our hand a great opportunity. 
We may if we choose capture an enormous new industry ; 
and the very determination to em.bark upon its capture 
will lead to an unexampled development in our entire 
industry of food production. But what we need is a new 
outlook. Farmers must cease to look upon the potato 
as a potato, but regard it as a manufacturer of starch — 
Ci, H,o 0:. — which is the raw material of a dozen 
industries, and enters into the manufacture of articles 
produced by scores of others. 
'No country is better equipped for producing this raw 
riiaterial in huge quantities than ours. In other countries 
less favoured than ours, the whole nation has co-operated 
with the' landowner, the farmers, and the labour in a 
sustained effort to put the land to its fullest use. Here 
it has been the townsman's utter disregard for the origin 
dnd real' cost, in contrast to the immediate cost, of tlie 
food he' eats which has so far kept British agriculture 
frdin developing on progressive lines, and prevented us 
from employing to the fullest extent our great resources 
of land and labour in the permanent interest of the whole 
country. 
