The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MAY 25. BREAD OF THE NATIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 38, 25 May 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MAY 25. BREAD OF THE NATIONS.

A notable clergyman of the mew school who holds that it is usetess preaching to starved bodies about the hereafter, if the "here" is hopeless, proceeded to show that the world's food supply had a •distinct ibearing on the morals of the .people and their "goodness" or "badness" In illustration of a point, he commented on the assertion that many of the great daily newspapers in the centres of -American and English populaI tion each used up an acre of forest per day for the making of printing paper. He also showed that the continual destruction of virgin forest diminished the natural water supply and hence the food supply. Increase of population makes greater demands on the land, and s« every year areas are required for the growing of cereals, grains, of course, being the basis of the food of all nations. Hundreds of .millions of people are dependent for their daily bread on countries in which they do not live, so that any interference with the supply would mean partial famine. For instance, Western and Central Europe depends almost entirely for its wheat on outsiders, and the population of this area increased in about twelve years by one hundred million people. The land under wheat in this area is less than it was before the increase of population. The United Kingdom is the best market Australasia has for her cereals, but even Britain grows eighty per cent, of the cereals it consumes, Germany, which is generally understood to be much more self-supporting, than Britain, getting six-ty-eight per cent, of its bread cereals from foreign countries. It is .therefore seen the vast importance the wheat trade assumes and what a splendid position new countries are in for doing immense trade in these products. The Argentine, which contains enormous areas of new land, has recognised tirj importance of the subject, and are now nearly twenty million acres under wheat. Canada is making'a boM bid for extended markets by increasing its areas every year. There are abcit eight million acres under wheat in thrj Great Dominion, while Australia —which grows the best milling wheat in the world—has six million acres. New Zealand has about half a million acres under wheat, the productiveness per acre for grain crops being larger here than in most other countries. The great wheat-grow-ing countries have largely depended on new land, and the general idea seems to ibe, not so much the heaviness of ;he yield, but the largeness of the arua. The point that with careful selection of seed and the best of scientific tillage, areas that now return but twelve or fourteen bushels might produce double or treble that amount, is exercising the minds of agriculturalists the world ov«. Enormous areas of scrub land in Australia sire treated in the roughest way for a quick return. It is usual in newcountry for the settler to roll the scrub down with bullock rollers, allowing it t» dry and then firing it. At seed time the wheat is sown broadcast over the ashes and the result left to chance. The immense labor and difficulty in stumping this land is the reason for the rough treatmentj themallee scrub, although having comparatively light tops, being heavily rooted. A clump of mallee with a dozen small trunks growing out of it will frequently have several tons of roots. That is why the Australian "cocky" has to use a stump-jumper plough the year after the "iburn," and why he frequently throws a parabola while following the horses. The probable reason for the light crops of cereals in the interior of Australia is that the wheat-growers have not yet become rich enough to really till their land. Irrigation schemes, which will surely come,' will revolutionise the wheat producing capacities of Australia, an imiportant element in this expansion being the increase of .population that must come with the development of the great island continent. As far as New Zealand is concerned, the denudation of bush ■will gradually affect the producing capacity of the land, and in the distant future irrigation schemes may become piri of a national system for the product : on of the necessary food-stuffs. New Zealand in its production of cereals has an advantage over other lands because of the great crops that may be obtained. The phenomenal yields of oats are a specially notable feature of New Zealand's fertility, and with the development of agricultural science there seems to be no reason why New Zealand should ever have to go outside for bread even though the population increases in proportion to the capacity of the land, to maintain the people. In relation to t?ic dependence of nations on the crops 01 other countries, the trust-monger holds the key of the situation. If he is strong enough he can virtually order a community to starve. This is probably why. in some of the European countries attempts are being made to legislate in the direction of the enforced growing of a large proportion of cereals. England, which proportionately has ths largest areas of unused land in Europe still recognises the value of making efforts to feed a larger proportion of its people -with locally-grown food. The probability is that in Britain, owing to the political developments which are taking place and the diminution of the power of territorial peers, a greater proportion of splendid country will be put to the plough in the near future. Tha country that can feed its people without going outside its own borders to do so, is strong and independent, and the country that depends on outside food may be made weak and dependent whenever the suppliers care to "put the screw on." (New Zealand has no difficulty in feeding

a million (people, and she has an unlimited market yawning for all the surplus cereals she can grow even if the wheat areas of the Dominion grewi to five million acres, , ...«,.ji:.-"