Page:The Conquest of Bread (1906).djvu/300



We have seen how the 3 million inhabitants of the two departments round Paris could find ample bread by cultivating only a third of their territory. Let us now pass on to cattle. Englishmen, who eat much meat, consume on an average a little less than 220 lb. a year per adult. Supposing all meats consumed were oxen, that makes a little less than the third of an ox. An ox a year for 5 individuals (including children) is already a sufficient ration. For 3 million inhabitants this would make an annual consumption of 700,000 head of cattle.

To-day, with the pasture system, we need at least 5 million acres to nourish 660,000 head of cattle. This makes 9 acres per each head of horned cattle. Nevertheless, with prairies moderately watered by spring water (as recently done on thousands of acres in the south-west of France), 1 million acres already suffice. But if intensive culture is practised, and beetroot is grown for fodder, you only need a quarter of that area, that is to say, about 310,000 acres. And if we have recourse to maize and practise ensilage (the compression of fodder while green) like Arabs, we obtain fodder on an area of 217,500 acres.

In the environs of Milan, where sewer water is used to irrigate the fields, fodder for 2 to 3 horned cattle per each acre is obtained on an area of 22,000 acres ; and on a few favoured fields, up to