AMAZING FIGURES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2363, 2 December 1908, Page 6

AMAZING FIGURES.

GREAT BRITAIN’S DEPENDENCE ON OTHER COUNTRIES. £•172.000,000' A YEAR IN --v FOREIGN FOOD. . .. The agricultural statistics for 1907. published by tlio British Board ol Agriculture, give an amazing record of the dependence of the British, Isles on other countries. Britain spent last year on imported food, alone over £172,000,000. On imports of wool and other agricultural produce,' such as hay, slie spent well over £200,000,000. The tables show that the percentage of imports to population ristas all round. More that tour-fiftlis of the wheat consumed in the United Kingdom now comes from abroad. In the seven years 1859-65 Britain imported ou an average 1261 b of wheat and flour per bead of the population each year. This amount has nearly doubled by a steady process which the accounts tor 1907 show to be as progressive as ever. But wheat is only one of the staple foods tor which Britain depends on other countries. In the last 50 years eaeli mail’s . expenditure on foreign foods has nearly trebled. The total expenditure per head of population was £1 2s 2d on the average of tlie years 1859 to 1865. It is £3 4s lid for the last seven, the foods included being wheat, meat, butter, cheese, eggs, fruit, and vegetables. Some of tlie- details are appalling. Britain consumed in 1907 2,228,148,000 foreign eggs, a great number coming from as far off as Russia and Italy. ago each individual ate eight foreign eggs in the year. Now each person eats 53, or rather more than one a week, including every member of tlie community. The agricultural development of Canada is conspicuous in many parts ; f \tlie report, but nothing is more remarkable than the purchase of British horses tor the studs of the Dominion. Britain exported altogether 61,fB3 horses, the biggest export ever known, though the total value oi £1,240,000 was exceeded in 1906. Tlie principal purchasers were Belgium and idle Netherlands; but Canada comes first of alb countries' as a purchaser oi ;-tallious and is second only to Belgium as a purchaser of mares.