As to the practical ways and means of obtaining this sum out of the soil, I must detail some of the more modern scientific methods in agriculture.
I have said that 8,000,000 acres of the present area under crops could make us independent of foreign supplies. By applying certain simple rules of selection regarding seeds, a much smaller area of land would give the same result.
Instead of 3½ quarters per acre—the present average—the yield could be doubled, or even trebled. Thirty years ago, in France, three quarters an acre was considered a good crop, but the same soil with improved methods of cultivation nowadays yields at least four quarters per acre; while in the best soils the crop is only considered good when it yields five quarters to six quarters an acre.
The work of the Garton brothers and of Professor Biffen, of Cambridge University, has clearly shown that by careful selection and crossing of the best breeds of wheat the yield can be actually quadrupled.
Hallet's famous experiments in selection demonstrate that the length of the wheat ear can be doubled, and the number of ears per stalk nearly trebled. The finest ear he developed produced 123 grains, as against 47 in the original ear, and 52 ears to one plant, as against ten in the original.
In agriculture, as in other matters in which England claims to take a leading part, we have something to learn from the Continent. France, Belgium, and Germany have adopted a system of co-operation which has reduced the cost of farming to the smallest possible limit. From a fund supplied partly by the Governments of these countries and partly by the farmers themselves, small farms, manures, seeds, machinery, etc., are provided on a co-operative basis. Would not a system on similar lines have far-reaching results in this country?
Perhaps the most interesting suggestion, the newest in the fields of scientific agriculture research, is the inoculation of the soil with bacteria. Through these wonder-working germs which live in the nodules of plant roots multiplication of the free nitrogen in the air goes on with great rapidity, and this, united with other elements, forms valuable plant food.
Recent experiments, the results of which have not yet been made public, show that good crops of wheat may be grown in the poorest soil; indeed, the Scriptural injunction about sowing seeds in waste places no longer bears scientific examination. On an area which was little more than common sand crops inoculated with bacteria gave an increased yield of 18 per cent.
Wheat grown on the lines I have touched upon within the United Kingdom, and paying the grower 40s. per quarter, would go far to solve every social and economic problem known. There would be work for all in the country districts, and consequently less poverty in the towns, and to the nation's resources would be conserved the enormous annual expenditure on foreign wheat of £67,000,000.