AGRICULTURE : LIABILITY OR ASSET ?

By COLIN CLARK

MANY important steps in agricultural policy have been taken during the last seven years, some of which have received general support, some of which have been disputed. But the basic idea which has commanded general agreement, from Government and Opposition alike, has been that Britain should be made more self-sufficing in agricultural products, the principal reason for this being to assist national defence.

Most people will, therefore, find it exceedingly shocking if I set out to demonstrate that it will do nothing of the kind. From the point of view of minimising our dependence on imports in time of war, it is almost true to say that the best policy is to close down British agriculture completely and to import all our food requirements from overseas.

How can we possibly reach such a paradoxical result ? The reason why it appears paradoxical is because most people have very little idea of the essential economic structure of British agriculture today. They think of agri- culture as consisting of a series of more or less self-contained farms, some perhaps mixed farms and some specialised, but all producing from our own soil quantities of cereals and livestock products. This picture was only partially true in 1914 and is quite unrepresentative today. During the last 3o years British agriculture has been almost entirely transformed from a system of " self-contained farming " to " factory farming." As agricultural reformers have always been urging us to do, we have become like Denmark. We import huge quantities of all kinds of feeding stuffs for animals, and most of our farms are now " factories " in which this imported raw material is converted into milk, eggs, bacon and beef. Unfortunately, from the point of view of war dangers; these imports of animal feeding stuffs are far bulkier than the livestock-products which they are intended to produce. What no one has done hitherto is to examine the statistics bearing on this highly important question.

The situation has in fact now been reached, in which the tonnage of materials which have to be imported for use in British agriculture is quite as great as the tonnage of food which it produces. This being so, the entire case for the maintenance of agriculture as a defensive measure falls to the ground. It would be more economical of shipping tonnage and also of financial resources to import almost the entire quantity of agricultural produce now produced in this country. Our present system of agriculture is a peace-time luxury rather than a war-time necessity.

These conclusions are very unexpected and require to be carefully substantiated. The first stumbling-block rises from the fact that a much larger proportion than is generally realised of our cereal imports is used for the feeding of live- stock and not for human consumption. It is possible to deter- mine the amount so used, thanks to the statistics collected under the Census of Production Act showing the quantities of home-produced and of imported grain milled for human consumption during a recent year. These figures show that mills covering 98 per cent. of the output of the industry ground (in 1935) 756,000 tons of home-produced wheat (as against a crop of 1,753,000 tons), and 4,858,000 tons of imported wheat as against total imports of 5,030,000 tons. In other words, nearly 6o per cent. of the home crop and a quarter of a million tons of imported wheat were required for stock-feeding. In 1933 over two-thirds of the home crop, and half a million tons of imports were so used. This does not complete the reckoning. Of the wheat which is ground, a considerable part, in the form of bran and offals, also goes for stock feeding. In other words, if we were planning for the minimum quantity of imports necessary for human consumption, we should import wheat in the form of flour rather than the whole grain, thereby saving a con- siderable proportion of the shipping tonnage required.

British agriculture is now consuming enormous quantities of maize, largely for the feeding of pigs and poultry. In 1934 3,000,000 tons of this cereal were imported. Large quantities of imported oil cakes and milling offals are also consumed.

Oil cake is the next most important fodder article. This is a by-product from the crushing of imported oil seeds and other products. The industry produces oils which arc mainly for industrial use, and cake for animal feeding stuffs as a by-product. In calculating the effect upon tonnage of imports, we must debit agriculture with the weight of imports of oil seeds, less the weight of oil which they contain. In the case of a shipping shortage it is reasonable to assume that, were it not for agricultural requirements, oil would be imported in the extracted form rather than the much bulkier oil seeds.

British agriculture also requires very large imports of store cattle from Ireland. The amount of shipping space required for these imports is, of course, large compared with the tonnage of meat represented, though the journey is short.

Finally, a considerable part of the fertilisers used by British agriculture, or the materials from which these fertilisers are made, have to be imported. A quarter of a million tons of ready-made fertilisers are imported every year, and nearly 200,000 tons of raw phosphate rock and guano. The manufacture of superphosphate and ammonium sulphate also requires large quantities of sulphuric acid which has to be made from imported materials.

Agricultural demand for fertilisers may perhaps be regarded as slightly less urgent than for feeding stuffs, but if the supply of fertilisers was completely discontinued even for 12 months it would have an immediate and disastrous effect upon productivity.

We must now look at the other side of the picture, namely, the tonnage of imports saved owing to the availability of home-produced farm produce. We must not, of course, take the gross figures of agricultural output. A large part of the tonnage of crops is again consumed by agriculture for stock-feeding, such as hay, mangels and most of the oat crop. We must only reckon the final product available for human consumption. In calculating the import equivalent of home agricultural produce, in the case of milk we can calculate the tonnage which would be required if an amount equivalent to the home output of milk were to be im- ported in the form of butter, cheese and condensed milk. Though livestock products form by far the most valuable part of English agricultural output, they do not represent any great weight or saving of import tonnage. By far the biggest bulk of home agricultural output is represented by potatoes and other vegetables.

We are now in a position to strike the balance of tonnages for 1934, which can be taken as a representative year, and obtain the surprising result indicated above : TONNAGE OF BRITISH AGRICULTURAL OUTPUT, 1934 (i.e., additional imports which would have bt e a necessary if this output had not been available).

Thousands of tons.

Flour from home-grown wheat 365 Oatmeal and other cereal products too 75% of malt used for brewing.. 300 Sugar and molasses 743

Potatoes 4,300

Peas and beans 77 Other vegetables Fruit .. 55o

Meat . . . . . . . . 1,320

Milk (expressed as butter, cheese and condensed milk) 658 Poultry . . 8o

Eggs . . 220

9,863

The tonnage of imports directly used in obtaining this output is as follows :

Thousands of tons.

Imported wheat consumed as such . . 525

Offal content of wheat imported for milling 1,48o Other cereals .. .. .. 4,018 Manufactured feeding-stuffs imported .. 1,651 Fodder content of oil seeds .. 1,262 Raw phosphates and guano .. Materials used by fertiliser trade Manufactured fertilisers imported Total of Fodder ..

Store beast's ..

247

320

197 8,936 175

Total of Fertilisers .. 764 TOTAL 9,875

We thus reach the startling but inescapable conclusion that in order to produce 9,863,000 tons of foodstuffs we need 9,875,000 tons of imports. In other words, a complete cessation of the activities of British agriculture would leave our import requirements almost exactly the same as they are. We can also reach the still more remarkable conclusion that if the activities of British agriculture were confined to the production of potatoes and vegetables, and possibly a certain amount of fresh milk, we effect a net saving in our import requirements of nearly 5,000,000 tons a year (this after making allowance for the fact that crops of potatoes and other vege- tables require heavy applications of fertiliser). In other words, up-to-date livestock farming as now practised in most parts of England is entirely dependent on large supplies of cheap imported cereals, and would be thrown into complete chaos if they ceased to be available. The only British crops which would be a real mainstay in emergency are the potato and the onion.