Is it impossible for this nation to produce food for 40,000,000 of people?

We cannot produce all our food. We cannot produce our own tea, coffee, cocoa, oranges, lemons, currants, raisins, figs, dates, bananas, treacle, tobacco, sugar, and many other things not suitable to our climate. But at a pinch, as during a war, we could do without most of these.

Can we produce our own bread, meat, and vegetables? Can we produce all, or nearly all, our butter, milk, eggs, cheese, and fruit?

And will it pay to produce these things if we are able to produce them at all?

The great essential is bread. Can we grow our own wheat? On this point I do not see how there can be any doubt whatever.

In 1841 Britain grew wheat for 24,000,000 of people, and at that time not nearly all her land was in use, nor was her farming of the best.

Now we have to find food, or at any rate bread and meat and vegetables, for 40,000,000.

Wheat, then, for 40,000,000. At present we consume 29,000,000 quarters. Can we grow 29,000,000 quarters in our own country?

Certainly we can. The average yield per acre in Britain is 28 bushels, or 3½ quarters. That is the average yield on British farms. It can be increased; but let us take it first upon that basis.

At 3½ quarters to the acre, 8,000,000 acres would produce 28,000,000 quarters; 9,000,000 acres would produce 31,500,000 quarters.

Therefore we require less than 9,000,000 acres of wheat land to grow a year's supply of wheat for 40,000,000 persons.

Now we have in Great Britain and Ireland about 33,000,000 acres of cultivatable land. Deduct 9,000,000 for wheat, and we have 24,000,000 acres left for vegetables, fruit, cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry.

Can any man say, in the face of these figures, that we are incapable of growing our own wheat?

Suppose the average is put too high. Suppose we could only average a yield of 20 bushels to the acre, or 2½ quarters, we could still grow 29,000,000 quarters on less than 12,000,000 acres.

It is evident, then, that we can at anyrate grow our own wheat.

Here I shall quote from an excellent book, Fields, Factories, and Workshops, by Prince Kropotkin. Having gone very carefully into the facts, the Prince has arrived at the following conclusions:—

1. If the soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated only as it was thirty-five years ago, 24,000,000 people could live on home-grown food.

2. If the cultivatable soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated as the soil is cultivated on the average in Belgium, the United Kingdom would have food for at least 37,000,000 inhabitants.

3. If the population of this country came to be doubled, all that would be required for producing food for 80,000,000 inhabitants would be to cultivate the soil as it is now cultivated in the best farms of this country, in Lombardy, and in Flanders.

Why, indeed, should we not be able to raise 29,000,000 quarters of wheat? We have plenty of land. Other European countries can produce, and do produce, their own food.

Take the example of Belgium. In Belgium the people produce their own food. Yet their soil is no better than ours, and their country is more densely populated, the figures being: Great Britain, per square mile, 378 persons; Belgium, per square mile, 544 persons.

Does that silence the commercial school? No. They have still one argument left. They say that even if we can grow our own wheat we cannot grow it as cheaply as we can buy it.

Suppose we cannot. Suppose it will cost us 2s. a quarter more to grow it than to buy it. On the 23,000,000 quarters we now import we should be saving £2,000,000 a year.

Is that a very high price to pay for security against defeat by starvation in time of war?

A battle-ship costs £1,000,000. If we build two extra battle-ships in a year to protect our food supply we spend nearly all we gain by importing our wheat, even supposing that it costs us 2s. a quarter more to grow than to buy it.

But is it true that we cannot grow wheat as cheaply as we can buy it? If it is true, the fact may doubtless be put down to two causes. First, that we do not go to work in the best way, nor with the best machinery; second, that the farmer is handicapped by rent. Of course if we have to pay rent to private persons for the use of our own land, that adds to the cost of the rent.

One acre yields 28 bushels, or 3½ quarters of wheat in a year. If the land be rented at 21s. an acre that will add 6s. a quarter to the cost of wheat.

In the Industrial History of England I find the question of why the English farmer is undersold answered in this way—

The answer is simple. His capital has been filched from him surely, but not always slowly, by a tremendous increase in his rent. The landlords of the eighteenth century made the English farmer the foremost agriculturist in the world, but their successors of the nineteenth have ruined him by their extortions.... In 1799 we find land paying nearly 20s. an acre.... By 1850 it had risen to 38s. 6d.... £2 an acre was not an uncommon rent for land a few years ago, the average increase of English rents being no less than 26½ per cent. between 1854 and 1879.... The result has been that the average capital per acre now employed in agriculture is only about £4 or £5, instead of at least £10, as it ought to be.

If the rents were as high as £2 an acre when our poor farmers were struggling to make both ends meet, it is little wonder they failed. A rent of £2 an acre means a land tax of more than 11s. a quarter on wheat. The price of wheat in the market at present is about 25s. a quarter. A rent charge of 21s. per acre would amount to more than £10,000,000 on the 9,000,000 we should need to grow all our wheat. A rent charge of £2 an acre would amount to £18,000,000. That would be a heavy sum for our farmers to lift before they went to market.

Moreover, agriculture has been neglected because all the mechanical and chemical skill, and all the capital and energy of man, have been thrown into the struggle for trade profits and manufacturing pre-eminence. We want a few Faradays, Watts, Stephensons, and Cobdens to devote their genius and industry to the great food question. Once let the public interest and the public genius be concentrated upon the agriculture of England, and we shall soon get silenced the croakers who talk about the impossibility of the country feeding her people.

But is it true that under fair conditions wheat can be brought from the other side of the world and sold here at a price with which we cannot compete? Prince Kropotkin thinks not. He says the French can produce their food more cheaply than they can buy it; and if the French can do this, why cannot we?

But in case it should be thought that I am prejudiced in favour of Prince Kropotkin's book or against the factory system, I will here print a quotation from a criticism of the book which appeared in the Times newspaper, which paper can hardly be suspected of any leanings towards Prince Kropotkin, or of any eagerness to acknowledge that the present industrial system possesses "acknowledged evils."

Seriously, Prince Kropotkin has a great deal to say for his theories.... He has the genuine scientific temper, and nobody can say that he does not extend his observations widely enough, for he seems to have been everywhere and to have read everything.... Perhaps his chief fault is that he does not allow sufficiently for the ingrained conservatism of human nature and for the tenacity of vested interests. But that is no reason why people should not read his book, which will certainly set them thinking, and may lead a few of them to try, by practical experiments, to lessen some of the acknowledged evils of the present industrial system.

Just notice what the Tory Times says about "the tenacity of vested interests" and the "acknowledged evils of the present industrial system." It is a great deal for the Times to say.

But what about the meat?

Prince Kropotkin deals as satisfactorily with the question of meat-growing as with that of growing wheat, and his conclusion is this—

Our means of obtaining from the soil whatever we want, under any climate and upon any soil, have lately improved at such a rate that we cannot foresee yet what is the limit of productivity of a few acres of land. The limit vanishes in proportion to our better study of the subject, and every year makes it vanish farther and farther from our sight.

I have, I think, quoted enough to show that there is no natural obstacle to our production in this country of all the food our people need. Britain can feed herself, and therefore, upon the ground of her use for foreign-grown food, the factory system is not necessary.

But I hope my readers will buy this book of Prince Kropotkin, and read it. For it is a very fine book, a much better book than I can write.

It can be ordered from the Clarion Office, 72 Fleet Street, and the price is 1s. 3d. post free.

As to the vegetables and the fruit, I must refer you to the Prince's book; but I shall quote a few passages just to give an idea of what can be done, and is being done, in other countries in the way of intensive cultivation of vegetables and fruit.

Prince Kropotkin says that the question of soil is a common stumbling-block to those who write about agriculture. Soil, he says, does not matter now, nor climate very much. There is a quite new science of agriculture which makes its own soil and modifies its climate. Corn and fruit can be grown on any soil—on rock, on sand, on clay.

Man, not Nature, has given to the Belgian soil its present productivity.

And now read this—

While science devotes its chief attention to industrial pursuits, a limited number of lovers of Nature, and a legion of workers whose very names will remain unknown to posterity, have created of late quite a new agriculture, as superior to modern farming as modern farming is superior to the old three-fields system of our ancestors.... Science seldom has guided them; they proceeded in the empirical way; but like the cattle-growers who opened new horizons to biology, they have opened a new field of experimental research for the physiology of plants. They have created a totally new agriculture. They smile when we boast about the rotation system having permitted us to take from the field one crop every year, or four crops each three years, because their ambition is to have six and nine crops from the very same plot of land during the twelve months. They do not understand our talk about good and bad soils, because they make the soil themselves, and make it in such quantities as to be compelled yearly to sell some of it: otherwise it would raise up the level of their gardens by half an inch every year. They aim at cropping, not five or six tons of grass on the acre, as we do, but from fifty to a hundred tons of vegetables on the same space; not £5 worth of hay, but £100 worth of vegetables of the plainest description—cabbage and carrots.

Look now at these figures from America—

At a recent competition, in which hundreds of farmers took part, the first ten prizes were awarded to ten farmers who had grown, on three acres each, from 262 to 346¾ bushels of Indian corn; in other words, from 87 to 115 bushels to the acre. In Minnesota the prizes were given for crops of 300 to 1120 bushels of potatoes to the acre, i.e. from 8¼ to 31 tons to the acre, while the average potato crop in Great Britain is only 6 tons.

These are facts, not theories. Here is another quotation from Prince Kropotkin's book. It also relates to America—

The crop from each acre was small, but the machinery was so perfected that in this way 300 days of one man's labour produced from 200 to 300 quarters of wheat; in other words, the areas of land being of no account, every man produced in one day his yearly bread food.

I shall only make one more quotation. It alludes to the intensive wheat-growing on Major Hallett's method in France, and is as follows:—

In fact, the 8½ bushels required for one man's annual food were actually grown at the Tomblaine station on a surface of 2250 square feet, or 47 feet square, i.e. on very nearly one-twentieth of an acre.

Now remember that our agricultural labourers crowd into the towns and compete with the town labourers for work. Remember that we have millions of acres of land lying idle, and generally from a quarter to three-quarters of a million of men unemployed. Then consider this position.

Here we have a million acres of good land producing nothing, and half a million men also producing nothing. Land and labour, the two factors of wealth production, both idle. Could we not set the men to work? Of course we could. Would it pay? To be sure it would pay.

In America, on soil no better than ours, one man can by one day's labour produce one man's year's bread. That is, 8½ bushels of wheat.

Suppose we organise our out-of-works under skilled farmers, and give them the best machinery. Suppose they only produce one-half the American product. They will still be earning more than their keep.

Or set them to work, under skilled directors, on the French or the Belgian plan, at the intensive cultivation of vegetables. Let them grow huge crops of potatoes, carrots, beans, peas, onions; and in the coal counties, where fuel is cheap, let them raise tomatoes and grapes, under glass, and they will produce wealth, and be no longer starvelings or paupers.

Another good plan would be to allow a Municipality to obtain land, under a Compulsory Purchase Act, at a fair rent and near a town, and to relet the land to gardeners and small farmers, to work on the French and Belgian systems. Let the local Corporation find the capital to make soil and lay down heating and draining pipes. Let the Corporation charge rent and interest, buy the produce from the growers and resell it to the citizens, and let the tenant gardeners be granted fixity of tenure and fair payment for improvements, and we shall increase and improve our food supply, lessen the overcrowding in our towns, and reduce the unemployed to the small number of lazy men who will not work.

It is the imperative duty of every British citizen to insist upon the Government doing everything that can be done to restore the national agriculture and to remove the dreadful danger of famine in time of war.

National granaries should be formed at once, and at least a year's supply of wheat should be kept in stock.

What are the Government doing in this way? Nothing at all.

The only remedy they have to suggest is Protection!

What is Protection? It is a tax on foreign wheat. What would be the result of Protection? The result would be that the landowner would get higher rents and the people would get dearer bread.

How true is Tolstoy's gibe, that "the rich man will do anything for the poor man—except get off his back." "Our agriculture," the Tory protectionist shrieks, "is perishing. Our farmers cannot make a living. Our landlords cannot let their farms. The remedy is Protection." A truly practical Tory suggestion. "The farmers cannot pay our rents. British agriculture is dying out. Let us put a tax upon the poor man's bread."

Yes; Protection is a remedy, but it must be the protection of the farmer against the landlord. Give our farmers fixity of tenure, compensation for improvements, and prevent the landlord from taxing the industry and brains of the farmer by increase of rent, and British agriculture will soon rear its head again.

Quite recently we have had an example of Protection. The coal owners combined and raised the price of coal some 6s. to 10s. a ton. It is said they cleared more than £60,000,000 sterling on the deal. What good did that do the workers? Did the colliers get any of the spoil in wages? No; that money is lying up ready to crush the colliers when they next strike.

It is the same story over and over again. We cannot have cheap coal because the rich owners demand big fortunes; we cannot have cheap houses or decent homes because the landlords raise the rents faster than the people can increase our trade; we cannot grow our food as cheaply as we can buy it because the rich owners of the land squeeze the farmer dry and make it impossible for him to live. And the harder the collier, the weaver, the farmer, and the mechanic work, the harder the landlord and the capitalist squeeze. The industry, skill, and perseverance of the workers avail nothing but to make a few rich and idle men richer and more idle.

As I have repeatedly pointed out before, we have by sacrificing our agriculture destroyed our insular position. As an island we may be, or should be, free from serious danger of invasion. But of what avail is our vaunted silver shield of the sea if we depend upon other nations for our food? We are helpless in case of a great war. It is not necessary to invade England in order to conquer her. Once our food supply is stopped we are shut up like a beleagured city to starve or to surrender.

Stop the import of food into England for three months, and we shall be obliged to surrender at discretion.

And our agriculture is to be ruined, and the safety and honour of the Empire are to be endangered, that a few landlords, coal owners, and money-lenders may wax fat upon the vitals of the nation.

So, I say, we do need Protection; but it is the protection of our farmers and colliers, our weavers and our mechanics, our homes, our health, our food, our cities, our children and women, yes, our national existence—against the rapacity of the rich lords, employers, and money-lenders, who impudently pose as the champions of patriotism and the expansion of the Empire.

Again, I recommend every Socialist to read the new edition of Prince Kropotkin's Fields, Factories, and Workshops.