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PERTH, FRIDAY, JAN. 20 1899.
AT the annual meeting of the British
Association in September of last year,
the president, Sir WILLIAM CROOKES,
in the course of his inaugural address,
delivered himself of some forebodings
which at the time attracted much
attention. The eminent scientist
drew a gloomy picture of a world
with bread insufficient for its daily
needs. He pointed out that the area
of land suitable for wheat growing
was limited, while the wheat con-
sumers were continually increasing.
When some years ago predictions
were indulged in as to the exhaustion
of the world's coal beds the period
was placed at so long a distance
ahead as to render the subject one of
scientific rather than practical interest.
So many generations would have
come and gone, and so much might
have happened in the meanwhile, that
it was impossible to feel very seriously
alarmed. But in estimating the
wheat producing capacities of the
world Sir WILLIAM CROOKES did not
ask us to peer into a future so far re-
moved as to stifle imagination. He
calculated that in 1931, in about a
third of a century, if population
increased at the present rate,
the limit of production under
existing conditions would have
been reached. But, having brought
his hearers face to face with this disturbing
contingency, he did not leave
them in doubt as to how it was to be
met. He explained that it would be
the mission of the laboratory to save a
suffering world from gradual extinc-
tion by starvation. The average,
yield per acre was to be raised from
127 bushels to 30 by a judicious
use of nitrogen, the most valuable of
all fertilisers. Nitrogen, as, of course,
everyone knows, exists in inexhaustible
quantities in the atmosphere,
but the difficulty lies in capturing
and rendering it available as plant
food, in the form of ammonia or nitric
acid. Sir WILLIAM CROOKES was confident
that with the aid of electricity
the feat could be performed, and with
fixed nitrogen available to almost
any extent, and costing not more
than £5 per ton, all fear of chronic
scarcity of wheat would be removed
into an indefinite future.
Whilst Sir WILLIAM CROOKES" pre-
diction as to the possibility of con-
verting the fixed nitrogen in the
air into nitrates has been received
with respect, his figures dealing with
the wheat-producing capacity of the
world have not been allowed to pass
unchallenged. In the Times of a
recent date Sir JOHN LAWES and Sir
HENRY GILBERT, two of the greatest
living authorities on wheat production,
deal with the subject at great
length. They admit with Sir
WILLIAM CROOKES that the number
of bread eaters in the world may
be set down at 516,500,000, and
that these require for food and seed
2,324,000,000 * bushels annually
Neither are they prepared to deny
that the wheat harvest of 1897-98
yielded only 1,921,000,000, which, including
a surplus of 300,000,000
bushels from the previous harvest,
left a deficit of 103,000,000 bushels.
But where they do join issue with the
President of the British Association is
in the contention that if the wheat
growing area of the world were increased
as much as possible, there
could not be added to the present
total more than 100,000,000 acres. It
is obvious that these figures must
lean very much to the side of conjecture.
It may be accepted as an axiom
that to a very considerable degree the
wheat growing area is ruled by the
price of wheat. We do not need to go
outside our own colony for instances
of this. Within the last few days the
farmers around Goomalling have been
complaining that they cannot compete
with the more fortunate growers who
have railway communication almost
alongside their own doors. Their land is
just as capable of growing good crops,
out they must have cheap means for
bringing those crops to market. The
price which has been ruling for wheat
within recent years has driven a very
large quantity of land out of cultiva-
tion in old countries, and in new
countries has done much to remove
the inducement to extend the wheat
growing belts or to adopt on those
belts what is called high farming.
How much wheat would have been
grown in Western Australia last year
but for the fact that a protected local
market existed ? We may go further
and ask, how many people suspected
the wheat growing capacity of the
colony would prove to be so large as it
is to-day ? And yet Western Australia
is only in the infancy of her wheat
production. Those best acquainted
with her agricultural resources do not
hesitate to declare that within a few
years she will not only grow a sufficiency
for her own population, but
will have a surplus for export. What
is true of the colony is in most respects
true of the world at large.
Under the stimulus of good prices, or
in other words a remunerative demand,
it is difficult to place a limit
upon the productiveness of the soil,
without even adopting Sir WILLIAM
CROOKES" expedient of pressing
Niagara into the service of the
farmer. The prairie lands of America
might, it is said, be made to double
their yield, not so much by the application
of fertilisers as by improved
cultural methods. But, so long as a
yield of from twelve to thirteen
bushels obtained by slovenly farming
is found to pay the general adoption
of an improved system is likely to remain
in the future. Poorer land in
the United Kingdom than that of the
prairies of America yields its 28
bushels to the acre, while on one of
his experimental plots at Rothamsted
Sir J. B. LAWES has for fifty years
obtained never less than 13 bushels
by rotation of crops, and keeping
the land free from weeds, and without
any aid from manure. At the same
time if the Falls of Niagara can be
made to draw from the atmosphere
twelve million tons of nitrates
annually, the world will be under
a stupendous debt to the scientist
who brings the process with-
in the regions of the practical.
It will be an achievement that will
seem to annihilate the Malthusian
doctrine. Except by the unforeseen
play of natural forces, wholly chang-
ing the climatic conditions of vast
portions of the earth's inhabited surface,
it will be difficult to conceive of
population growing more quickly than
the means of subsistence. We shall,
it may be taken for granted, have to
wait very much longer than thirty
years before all the land suitable for
wheat growing is placed under contribution.
But it is at least a satisfaction
to believe, when at length that
stage is reached, and methods of
farming have approached as nearly as
possible to perfection, that science will
be able to step in and to renew the
fertility of the soil by nitrogen drawn
from the boundless reservoirs of the
air we breathe.
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