Fig. 2.—Proportion of the cultivated area which is given to cereals altogether, and to wheat, in Belgium. The square which encloses the wheat square represents the area given to both wheat and a mixture of wheat with rye.
If the exports and imports of agricultural produce from and into Belgium be taken into account, we can ask ourselves whether Laveleye’s conclusions are not still good, and whether only one inhabitant out of each ten to twenty requires imported food. In the years 1880-1885 the soil of Belgium supplied with home-grown food no less than 490 inhabitants per square mile, and there remained something for export—no less than £1,000,000 worth of agricultural produce being exported every year to Great Britain. But it is not possible to say with certitude whether the conditions are the same at the present time.
Fig. 3.—Proportion of cultivated and uncultivated areas in Great Britain, Belgium, and France. a, Wheat; b, wheat and rye mixed; c, other cereals; d′, green crops; d, permanent pasture; e, uncultivated.
Since 1880, when the duties on imported cereals were abolished (they were before that sixpence for each 220 lb.), and corn could be imported free, “the importers were no more obliged to make special declarations for merchandise which had to be re-exported; they declared their imports as if they were destined to be used within the country.”[55] The result was, that while in the year 1870 the imports of cereals were 154 lb. per head of population, the same imports rose to 286 lb. in 1880. But no one can say how much of these 286 lb. is consumed in Belgium itself; and if we deduct from the total of the imports the quantities re-exported the same year, we obtain figures which cannot be relied upon.[56] It is therefore safer to consider the figures of the annual production of cereals in Belgium, such as they are given in the official Annuaire.
Now, if we take the figures given in the Annuaire Statistique de la Belgique for the year 1911, we come to the following results. The annual agricultural census, which is being made since 1901, gives for the year 1909 that 2,290,300,000 lb. of wheat, rye, and wheat mixed with rye were obtained on all the farms of Belgium larger than two and a half acres (2,002,000,000 lb. in 1895). Besides, 219,200,000 lb. of barley, 1,393,000,000 lb. of oats, and a considerable quantity of oleaginous grains have been produced.
It is generally accepted that the average consumption of both winter and spring cereals attains 502 lb. per head of population; and as the population of Belgium was 7,000,000 on January 1, 1907, it appears that no less than 3,524,400,000 lb. of cereals would have been required to supply the annual food of the population. If we compare this figure with that of the annual production just mentioned, we see then that, notwithstanding the considerable decrease of the area given to wheat since the abolition of the entrance duties, Belgium still produces at least two-thirds of the cereal food required for its very dense population, which is nearly 600 persons per square mile (596 in 1907).
It must be noticed that we should have come to a still higher figure if we took into account the other cereals (to say nothing of the leguminous plants and vegetables grown and consumed in Belgium), and still more so if we took into account what is grown upon the small holdings less than two and a half acres each. The number of such small holdings was 554,041 in 1895, and the number of people living upon them reached nearly 2,000,000. They are not included in the official statistics, and yet upon most of them some cereals are grown, in addition to vegetables and fodder for cattle.
If Belgium produces in cereals the food of more than two-thirds of its very dense population, this is already a quite respectable figure; but it must also be said that it exports every year considerable quantities of products of the soil. Thus, in the year 1910 she exported 254,730 tons of vegetables (as against 187,000 imported), 40,000 tons of fruit, 34,000 tons of plants and flowers (the whole nearly £3,000,000 worth), 256,000 of oleaginous grains, 18,500 tons of wool, nearly 60,000 tons of flax, and so on. I do not mention the exports of butter, rabbits, skins, an immense quantity of sugar (about 180,000 tons), the vegetable oils and the spirits, because considerable quantities of beet and potatoes are imported. In short, we have here an export of agricultural produce grown in the country itself attaining the figure of 48s. per head of population.