All taken, there is thus no possibility of contesting the fact, that if the soil of Great Britain were cultivated only as the unfertile soil of Belgium is cultivated—notwithstanding all the social obstacles which stand in the way of an intensive culture, in Belgium as elsewhere—a much greater part of the population of these islands would obtain its food from the soil of its own land than is the case nowadays.[57]
On the other side it must not be forgotten that Belgium is a manufacturing country which exports, moreover, manufactured home-made goods to the value of 198s. per head of population, and 150s. worth of crude or half-manufactured produce, while the total exports from the United Kingdom have only lately attained during the extraordinary year of 1911 the value of 201s. per inhabitant. As to separate parts of the Belgian territory, the small and naturally unfertile province of West Flanders not only grew in 1890 the food of its 580 inhabitants on the square mile, but exported agricultural produce to the value of 25s. per head of its population. And yet no one can read Laveleye’s masterly work without coming to the conclusion that Flemish agriculture would have realised still better results, were it not hampered in its growth by the steady and heavy increase of rent. In the face of the rent being increased each nine years, many farmers have lately abstained from further improvements.
Another example of what could be achieved by means of an effort of the nation seconded by its educated classes is given by Denmark. After the war of 1864, which ended in the loss of one of their provinces, the Danes made an effort widely to spread education amongst their peasants, and to develop at the same time an intensive culture of the soil. The result of these efforts is now quite evident. The rural population of Denmark, instead of flocking to the towns, has been increasing: in five years, 1906-1911, it rose from 1,565,585 to 1,647,350. Out of a total population of 2,775,100, no less than 990,900 find their living in agriculture, dairy work, and forestry. With a very poor soil, they have a cultivated area a trifle below 7,000,000 acres, out of which 2,773,320 acres are under cereals. Their wheat crops are on the average 406/10 bushels per acre, and the value of the home-grown food-stuffs is estimated at £40,000,000, which makes a little less than £6 per acre. As to their exports of home-grown produce, they exceed the imports by £14,483,000. The chief cause of these successes are: A highly developed agricultural education, town markets accessible to all the growers, and, above all, co-operation, which again is a result of the effort that was made by the educated classes after the unfortunate war of 1864.
Everyone knows that it is now Danish butter which rules the prices in the London market, and that this butter is of a high quality, which can only be attained in co-operative creameries with cold storage and certain uniform methods in producing butter. But it is not generally known that the Siberian butter, which is now imported in immense quantities into this country, is also a creation of the Danish co-operators. When they began to export their butter in large quantities, they used to import butter for their own use from the southern parts of the West Siberian provinces of Tobolsk and Tomsk, which are covered with prairies very similar to those of Winnipeg in Canada. At the outset this butter was of a most inferior quality, as it was made by every peasant household separately. The Danes began therefore to teach co-operation to the Russian peasants, and they were rapidly understood by the intelligent population of this fertile region. The co-operative creameries began to spread with an astounding rapidity, without us knowing for some time wherefrom came this interesting movement. At the present time a steamer loaded with Siberian butter leaves every week one of the Baltic ports and brings to London many thousands of casks of Siberian butter. If I am not wrong, Finland has also joined lately in the same export.
Without going as far as China, I might quote similar examples from elsewhere, especially from Lombardy. But the above will be enough to caution the reader against hasty conclusions as to the impossibility of feeding 46,000,000 people from 78,000,000 acres. They also will enable me to draw the following conclusions: (1) If the soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated only as it was forty-five years ago, 24,000,000 people, instead of 17,000,000, could live on home-grown food; and this culture, while giving occupation to an additional 750,000 men, would give nearly 3,000,000 wealthy home customers to the British manufactures. (2) If the cultivable area of the United Kingdom were cultivated as the soil is cultivated on the average in Belgium, the United Kingdom would have food for at least 37,000,000 inhabitants; and it might export agricultural produce without ceasing to manufacture, so as freely to supply all the needs of a wealthy population. And finally (3), if the population of this country came to be doubled, all that would be required for producing the food for 90,000,000 inhabitants would be to cultivate the soil as it is cultivated in the best farms of this country, in Lombardy, and in Flanders, and to utilise some meadows, which at present lie almost unproductive, in the same way as the neighbourhoods of the big cities in France are utilised for market-gardening. All these are not fancy dreams, but mere realities; nothing but the modest conclusions from what we see round about us, without any allusion to the agriculture of the future.
If we want, however, to know what agriculture can be, and what can be grown on a given amount of soil, we must apply for information to such regions as the district of Saffelare in East Flanders, the island of Jersey, or the irrigated meadows of Lombardy, which are mentioned in the next chapter. Or else we may apply to the market-gardeners in this country, or in the neighbourhoods of Paris, or in Holland, or to the “truck farms” in America, and so on.
While science devotes its chief attention to industrial pursuits, a limited number of lovers of nature and a legion of workers whose very names will remain unknown to posterity have created of late a quite new agriculture, as superior to modern farming as modern farming is superior to the old three-fields system of our ancestors. Science seldom guided them, and sometimes misguided—as was the case with Liebig’s theories, developed to the extreme by his followers, who induced us to treat plants as glass recipients of chemical drugs, and who forgot that the only science capable of dealing with life and growth is physiology, not chemistry. Science seldom has guided them: they proceeded in the empirical way; but, like the cattle-growers who opened new horizons to biology, they have opened a new field of experimental research for the physiology of plants. They have created a totally new agriculture. They smile when we boast about the rotation system, having permitted us to take from the field one crop every year, or four crops each three years, because their ambition is to have six and nine crops from the very same plot of land during the twelve months. They do not understand our talk about good and bad soils, because they make the soil themselves, and make it in such quantities as to be compelled yearly to sell some of it: otherwise it would raise up the level of their gardens by half an inch every year. They aim at cropping, not five or six tons of grass on the acre, as we do, but from 50 to 100 tons of various vegetables on the same space; not £5 worth of hay but £100 worth of vegetables, of the plainest description, cabbage and carrots, and more than £200 worth under intensive horticultural treatment. This is where agriculture is going now.