COUNTRY LIFE
A SUCCESSION of ingenious leaflets is published at intervals by Mr. Orwin and his team from the excellent Agricultural Economic School at Oxford. In the latest appear statistics of the amount of food, or fodder, produced per head of workers in different countries. This particular form of census, which grows popular, is almost always—at least as I see things—misinterpreted. A great hedgeless farm, highly mechanised and treated with forcing artificial manures, would be likely to show the best figures, and the family farm the worst. Moreover, in the first example the soil would degenerate and in the second improve. What essentially matters is not the product per man, but the produce per acre. The Oxford statistics do not include this consideration, but I believe that the Russian co-operative farms, which must be judged a national success, employ more men per hundred acres than any other extensive farms. Five hands used to be regarded in old days as the right number in England. As many as twelve (which certainly sounds excessive) are in some sort and in some places employed on a hundred Russian acres.
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