AGRICULTURE AS ASSET

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 September 1929, Page 3

AGRICULTURE AS ASSET

SURVEY OF MODERN PROBLEM. f ‘Agriculture is a? so the one stable industry. Coal seat is come to an end, or the discovery of new sources of energy changes the values of coal. Advances in physical science may, while i creating new Indus tries, destroy old ones. The wealth of gold and diamond fields depends upon artificial values which might disapj iar if society were constituted on a nc v basis with a different monetary sy .tern and different culture. But agricultural wealth, the capacity to produce every year the food and clothing without which life ends, is and alway.. has been the one great permanent industry, the one which is the found: cion of all national or indeed of wc rid wealth.” —Sir Robert Greig. In these days, v hen there is so much talk about c loser relations between the differe it parts of the British Empire, tl e advantages and disadvantages of I ariffs, preferential and otherwise, the re is a refreshing directness and simplicity in the address which Sir Robert Greig, LL.D., M.Sc., Chairman of the Board of Agriculture for Scotia:id, gave as President of that section of the British Association meeting in South Africa, which dealt with the subject of Agriculture. j Sir Robert, as a scientist with a practical outlook, obviously thinks that co-operation in agricultural research is the most efficient and useful effort that can be made to bring about the best kind of Empire unity. “Membership of an Empire such as ours is, like freedom, a noble thing,” -said Sir Robert Greig. “The mere size of the Empire grips tile mind and makes an emotional appeal which, when fully realised, is a step towards a unified world. The Empire is so widespread and so various that it can accommodate every kind of mind or body. A man feeling cramped in Scotland can find room in South Africa. He who finds his intellectual horizon limited in New Zealand may find his spiritual home in Oxford or in Edinburgh.

“Because the Empire includes so many diverse peoples differing in physical and mental attributes, and because it yields such a variety of natural products, it offers problems, political, social and industrial, of peculiar interest and complexity. It can provide greater facilities than can small homogenous units, for within the Empire is every kind of external stimulus that goes to promote mental development and intellectual advancement.

“But citizenship of the Empire involves responsibilities. The principle of trusteeship is admitted. The governments are trustees for rich territories covering nearly a quarter of the globe. They are also responsible for hundreds of millions of native populations. These native populations can rise in the scale of civilisation only according as they may be influenced by education, sanitation, law and order.

“The native populations will judge us in the future not by the excellence of our administration but by the means we take to help them to a higher standard of living and to secure for them some of the benefits of civilisation. We, then, as citizens, are bound to develop the Empire even for the sake only of the native populations. Finally, we are trustees to the world in general as custodians of so great a part of the world’s wealth. “The progress of civilisation depends upon science, not science stated crudely as chemistry or botany, but the scientific spirit applied to all aspects of life. If science is applied to the economies of the Empire, the greatest economic asset to which it can be applied is agriculture. From the standpoint of area, or wealth, or population employed, agriculture is by far the most important activity in the Empire. The true wealth of the world, the wealth which determines the standard of living of nations, is limited by the capacity to produce cereals, milk, meat, wool, cotton, hides and other prime necessities of life of soil origin; without a sufficient supply of these progress in the art of living is impossible.

“The British Dominions, India and the Colonies cover 24 per cent, or nearly one-quarter of the globe, and they contain 24 per cent, or nearly one-quarter, of the world’s population.

“Of this immense area no precise measure of the full extent- of land in agricultural use is available, but the proportion is small. The most intensively cultivated of the large areas is India, the least intensively cultivated is Australia. In the aggregate only 8.1 per cent, of the total land surface of Canada, India, the Union of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand is under arable cultivation. Only about one acre in every hundred of Australia is under cultivated crops, about two and a-half acres in Canada, and three acres in South Africa and New Zealand respectively. It is difficult to obtain figures indicative of the possibilities of the tropical and subtropical territories, but the African possessions alone are capable of enormously increased production. “In the nine provinces of Canada the ‘possible farmland’ is 358 million acres, or about one-quarter of the total land area of the provinces, and five and a-half times the present total of both arable and pasture. In India, the most intensively cultivated, it is estimated that the cultivable waste land is equal to half the present cultivated area, or about 153 million acres.

“It is obvious that a vast area of the Empire is capable of further production, even if developed only on the present lines with the application of existing knowledge. But if we apply not only the science now at our disposal but the results of further researches and investigations which are sure to follow, the potentialities become almost incredible.

“When the Imperial Agricultural Research Conference was held in London in 1927, influenced as it was by the great success which had followed the formation of the Bureaux of Entomology and Mycology, it strongly recommended the creation of clearing stations or Information Bureaux for the collection and distribution of information concerning certain sections or agricultural research. The proposal found acceptance with the British and Dominion Governments and with the Colonies, and several of these bureaux are now in operation. “I believe that they will prove of extraordinary value in the development of the Empire. They are eight in number for the present. How far they may be added to, experience will decide. They are all, by the unanimous decision of Empire delegates, situated in Britain. They deal with Soils, Animal Nutrition, Animal Genetics, Animal Hygiene, Plant Breeding, Animal Parasitology, and Fruit Production. “Take a simple illustration,” said

Sir Robert Greig later. “Suppose, and this is probably true, that the sheep on the hill grazings of Scotland and England have diminished by one-third in fifty years. The Agricultural Administrator concerned appeals to the Research Institutes. They reply that there are probably half a dozen factors contributing to the decrease. Then follows the inquiry, the suggested plan of campaign, the funds, the men, the attack. Yet out of such an investigation may arise the information which will enable principles of general application to be determined regarding sheep and pastures over half the world. Here the administrator has set the ball a-rolling. “But the politician, or to give him a worthier name, the Statesman, is not out of the swim. Let us suppose that South Africa wishes to take . a large share in the supply of chilled beef and mutton to the great industrial centres of England. Immediately there arises a problem economical, genetical, nutritional, pathological and botanical, which can only be solved by the combined operations of a number of scientific and business men working together. “We have the only system of government in the world that can link up research in countries with all kinds of soils and .climates. We have the finest and most varied laboratory in the world. We have the nucleus of an organisation and we have the opportunity. “Within the Empire is the Empire’s greatest market for agricultural produce and the Empire’s greatest source of supply. The development of agriculture would have an enormous influence in the development of Empire trade. Co-operation in research leads to better understanding between the Dominions, the Colonies, and the Mother Country. Conferences of research workers and administrators lead to the discovery of common aims and ideals, as was shown in the Conference of 1927, and the pursuit of common aims is one of the most enduring of ties.

“But the scientific man knows no boundaries; he is one of the few real internationalists in the world to-day; the knowledge he obtains is subject to no tariff, receives no bounty, is freely exchangeable throughout the world. As a scientific man—if he is within the British Empire—he may engage in the solution of larger problems than probably any other unit can provide. “This opportunity is the possibility that by taking thought and by organising the acquisition and the application of knowledge, the wealth of the Empire can be greatly increased, and thereby, and necessarily, the wealth of the rest of the world will- be increased also. “It is a far cry to an organised Empire, but if the object is worth it, the initial step is to adopt the ‘viewpoint’ described by General Smuts. With the view-point and the mental field surrounding it come the creative ideas which in the end realise the dream. What I plead for then is the ‘view-point.’ Even in the prosaic occupation of agriculture, of the earth earthy, I suggest that the Imperial view-point is stimulating and creative. “The conception of an organised agriculture based upon science should, I think, be part of the mental equipment of every statesman and administrator. The same vision should inspire every research worker if, in the words of the late Lord Morley, he is to weave the strands of knowledge into the web of social progress. “If the vision is keen enough, the conception wide enough, the energy enduring, and the courage unfailing, is it not possible that the group of free nations which constitute the British Empire may demonstrate the means and lead the way to that wider world government to which every generous and contemplative mind would look?”