GERMAN FARMING

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2910, 24 October 1916, Page 8

GERMAN FARMING

REPORT ON THE ENEMY'S FOOD* RESOURCES. Lord Selborne, in a prefatory note to a report to the Board of Agriculture on "The Recent DoTelopment of German Agriculture," by Mr. T. H. lliddloton, assistant secretary, writes:—"lt has been part of my duty to make a study of the agriculture of Germany, and in the course of my work it became apparent : to inc that, if agriculture had made no more progress in Germany that it has in the United Kingdom during the period 1895 to 1915, the German Empire would hare Been at the end of its food resources long before the end of the second year of war, and that, as a matter of fact, the irar was being fought by it just as much on an agricultural as on a military organisation of the nation." Mr. ifiddleton, in a comparison of the results obtained by British and German'' farmers, shows that on each 100 acres of cultivated land the following results are obtained:—

British farmer. Gorman farmer. Feeds...4s to 50 perrons 70 to 75 persons Gtot/5...15 toils of com 33 tons 11 tons of potatoes 55 tons . I tons of meat i\ tons 171 tons of milk 28 tons Negligible quantity of sugar 2-2 tons This ascendancy of the German lias boon gaiued in *•"* * ast ycars - fioil and climato of Germany, ho asserts, are less favonraelo to agriculture than those of Britain, and tlie actual methods of tillage in. Britain are not infcricir to tho methods adopted in Germany. The difference in production is chiefly due to the circumstance that in Britain more than two-thirds of the? cultivated land in now in grass, whilo in Germany less than one-third in grass. About 93 per cent, of tho land of Germany is owned-by the men who cultivate it; in England and Wales only 11 per cent, of the occupiers arc owners. 'I aken as a whole tho average German farmer devotes much mare snace than tho inglish farmer to crops like potatoes, jvlucli produce large'quantities of human food.