Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/382

378 capable of growing a crop. You yourselves will supply better than I can the Australian parallels, at any rate we in England read that the wheatbelt is now being extended into districts where the low rainfall had hitherto been thought to preclude any systematic cropping.

Now, the fact that the supply of naturally fertile land is not unlimited reacts in its turn upon the old countries. During the 'eighties and 'nineties of the last century the opening up of such vast wheat areas in America, Argentina, Australia, and the development of the overseas trade reduced prices in Europe to such an extent that in Great Britain, where the full extent of the competition was experienced, the extension of agriculture came to an end despite the continued increase of population. The area of land under cultivation has declined but little despite the growth of the towns, but the process of taking in the waste lands stopped and much of the land already farmed fell back from arable to cheaper pasture. But as soon as production in the newer countries failed to keep pace with the growth of population prices began to rise again, and we are now in the old world endeavoring to make productive the land that has hitherto been of little service except for sport and the roughest of grazing. Even the most densely populated European countries contain great areas of uncultivated land; within fifty miles of London blocks of a thousand acres of waste may be found, and Holland and Belgium, perhaps the most intensively cultivated of all western countries, possess immense districts that are little more than desert. Of the European countries, Germany has taken the lead in endeavoring to bring into use this undeveloped capital; her population is rising rapidly and her fiscal policy has caused her to feel severely the recent increase in the prices of foodstuffs, which she has determined to relieve as far as possible by extending the productivity of her own land. It has been estimated that Germany possesses something approaching to ten million acres of uncultivated land, and a government department has been created to reclaim and colonize this area.

Before dealing with the processes by which the rough places of the earth are to be made straight there is one general question that deserves consideration—Is it more feasible to increase the production of a given country by enlarging the area under cultivation or by improving the methods of the existing cultivators? There is without doubt plenty of room for the latter process even in the most highly farmed countries: in England the average yield of wheat is about 32 bushels per acre—a good farmer expects 40; the average yield of mangolds, a crop more dependent upon cultivation, is as low as 20 tons per acre when twice as much will not be out of the way with good farming. A large proportion of the moderate land in England is kept in the state of poor grass—even as grass its production might be doubled by suitable manuring and careful management, while under the plough its production of