Taking everything into consideration, although the Frenchman keeps less cattle, and especially grazes less sheep than the Briton, he nevertheless obtains from his soil nearly all the food that he and his cattle consume. He imports, in an average year, but one-tenth only of what the nation consumes, and he exports to this country considerable quantities of food produce (£10,000,000 worth), not only from the south, but also, and especially, from the shores of the Channel (Brittany butter and vegetables; fruit and vegetables from the suburbs of Paris, and so on).[49]
The net result is that, although one-third part of the territory is also treated as “uncultivable,” the soil of France yields the food for 170 inhabitants per square mile (out of 188), that is, for forty persons more, per square mile, than this country.[50]
It is thus apparent that the comparison with France is not so much in favour of this country as it is said to be; and it will be still less favourable when we come, in our next chapter, to horticulture.
The comparison with Belgium is even more striking—the more so as the two systems of culture are similar in both countries. To begin with, in Belgium we also find an average crop of over thirty bushels of wheat to the acre; but the area given to wheat is five times as big as in Great Britain, in comparison to the cultivable area, and the cereals cover two-fifths of the land available for culture.[51] The land is so well cultivated that the average crops for the years 1890-1899 (the very bad year of 1891 being left out of account) were from twenty-six and a half to twenty-eight and a half bushels per acre for winter wheat, and reached an average of thirty-three and a half bushels in 1900-1904; over fifty-four bushels for oats (thirty-five to forty-one and a half in Great Britain), and from forty to forty-three and a half bushels for winter barley (twenty-nine to thirty-five in Great Britain); while on no less than 475,000 acres catch crops of swedes (3,345,000 tons), carrots (155,000 tons), and more than 500,000 of lucerne and other grasses were obtained.[52]
As to extraordinarily heavy crops, Mr. Seebohm Rowntree mentions, for instance, the wheat crop in the commune of Oirbeck, near Louvain, which was, in 1906, on the average, fifty-seven bushels per acre, while the average of the whole country was only thirty-four bushels, or a yield of 111½ bushels of oats in the commune of Neuve-Eglise, while the average for Belgium was fifty-four bushels, and so on, the average crops of several communes for some cereals being seventy-three per cent. in excess of the average for Belgium, and from 106 to 153 per cent. for roots.[53]
All taken, they grow in Belgium more than 76,000,000 bushels of cereals—that is, fifteen and seven-tenths bushels per acre of the cultivable area—while the corresponding figure for Great Britain is only eight and a half bushels; and they keep almost twice as many cattle upon each cultivable acre as is kept in Great Britain.[54]
Moreover, they even export cattle and horses. Up to 1890 Belgium exported from 36,000 to 94,000 head of cattle, from 42,000 to 70,000 sheep, and from 60,000 to 108,600 swine. In 1890 these exports suddenly came to an end—probably in consequence of a prohibition of such imports into Germany. Only horses continue to be exported to the amount of about 25,000 horses and foals every year.
Large portions of the land are given besides to the culture of industrial plants, potatoes for spirit, beet for sugar, and so on.
However, it must not be believed that the soil of Belgium is more fertile than the soil of this country. On the contrary, to use the words of Laveleye, “only one half, or less, of the territory offers natural conditions which are favourable for agriculture”; the other half consists of a gravelly soil, or sands, “the natural sterility of which could be overpowered only by heavy manuring.” Man, not nature, has given to the Belgium soil its present productivity. With this soil and labour, Belgium succeeds in supplying nearly all the food of a population which is denser than that of England and Wales, and numbers 589 inhabitants to the square mile.