Book I, Chapter XI, 13

Although improvement must therefore be well advanced before cattle command a price high enough to make it profitable to cultivate land to feed them, they are perhaps the first among all the products in this second class to reach that price. Until they do, it seems impossible for improvement to approach even the degree of perfection attained in many parts of Europe.

If cattle are among the first, venison is perhaps among the last in this class to reach that price. Extravagant as the price of venison in Great Britain may seem, it comes nowhere near covering the cost of a deer park, as everyone experienced in keeping deer knows. Otherwise deer keeping would soon become an ordinary branch of farming, just as the rearing of small birds called turdi was among the ancient Romans. Varro and Columella assure us it was highly profitable. Fattening ortolans, migratory birds that arrive in the country lean, is said to be profitable in some parts of France. If venison stays fashionable while Britain’s wealth and luxury continue to grow as they have lately, its price may very well rise higher still.

A long interval separates the stage of improvement when an essential commodity such as cattle reaches its highest price from the stage when a luxury such as venison does. During that interval, many other kinds of raw produce gradually reach their highest prices, some earlier and some later, according to circumstances.

On every farm, for example, the scraps from barn and stable will support a certain number of poultry. Since they feed on what would otherwise be wasted, they serve to salvage those scraps; costing the farmer almost nothing, they can be sold very cheaply. Nearly everything he receives is pure gain, and the price can scarcely be so low that it discourages him from keeping that number. In poorly cultivated and therefore sparsely inhabited countries, however, poultry raised at no expense often suffice to meet the entire demand. They are then often as cheap as butcher’s meat or any other animal food. Yet the total amount of poultry a farm can raise at no expense must always be much smaller than the amount of butcher’s meat it can produce. In wealthy and luxurious times, what is rare is always preferred to what is common if it is nearly as desirable. As wealth and luxury grow with improvement and cultivation, poultry therefore gradually becomes dearer than butcher’s meat, until its price makes it profitable to cultivate land to feed the birds. Once the price reaches this height it can hardly rise further; if it did, more land would soon be put to that use. In several French provinces, raising poultry is considered a very important part of rural economy, profitable enough to encourage a farmer to grow a considerable amount of Indian corn and buckwheat for feed. A farmer of moderate means there will sometimes have four hundred fowls in his yard. Poultry raising seems not yet to be generally considered so important in England. The birds are certainly dearer there than in France, however, since England imports considerable supplies from France. As improvement advances, the time when any particular kind of animal food is dearest must naturally come immediately before cultivating land specifically to produce it becomes general practice. For some time before that practice spreads, scarcity must drive up its price. Once it becomes general, new methods of feeding are usually devised that allow the farmer to produce much more of that food on the same amount of land. Abundance compels him to sell more cheaply, while these improvements also enable him to do so; without that ability, the abundance could not last. It was probably in this way that the introduction of clover, turnips, carrots, cabbages, etc. helped lower the ordinary price of butcher’s meat in the London market somewhat below its level around the beginning of the last century.

The hog, which forages in filth and eagerly eats much that every other useful animal refuses, is at first kept, like poultry, to consume what would otherwise be wasted. While the animals that can be raised at little or no expense in this way suffice to meet demand, their meat reaches market much more cheaply than any other butcher’s meat. But once demand exceeds this supply, food must be grown expressly to feed and fatten hogs, as it is for other cattle. Their price then necessarily rises, becoming proportionately higher or lower than the price of other butcher’s meat according to whether the country’s natural conditions and state of agriculture make hog feeding more or less expensive than feeding other cattle. According to Mr Buffon, pork in France costs nearly as much as beef. In most parts of Great Britain it now costs somewhat more.

In Great Britain, the great rise in the price of hogs and poultry has often been attributed to the decline in the number of cottagers and other small landholders. This change has immediately preceded improvement and better cultivation throughout Europe; at the same time, it may have made those foods dearer both earlier and more rapidly than they otherwise would have become. Just as even the poorest family can often keep a cat or dog at no expense, the poorest landholders can usually keep a few poultry, or a sow and a few pigs, at very little expense. Their table scraps, whey, skimmed milk, and buttermilk provide part of the animals’ food; they find the rest in neighboring fields without causing anyone appreciable harm. The decline of these small landholders must therefore have substantially reduced the supply of food thus produced at little or no expense, driving up its price earlier and faster than otherwise. Sooner or later, however, improvement would in any case have raised that price to the highest point it can reach: the level that pays for the labor and cost of cultivating the land that feeds the animals as well as such costs are paid on most other cultivated land.

Dairy farming, like the keeping of hogs and poultry, begins as a way to make use of what would otherwise be wasted. Cattle necessarily kept on a farm produce more milk than is needed to rear their young or feed the farmer’s family, and their yield is greatest in one particular season. Of all the land’s products, however, milk is perhaps the most perishable. In warm weather, when it is most plentiful, it will scarcely keep four-and-twenty hours. By making fresh butter, the farmer preserves a small share for a week; by making salted butter, for a year; and by making cheese, a much larger share for several years. Some of each is kept for his family; the remainder goes to market for the best obtainable price, which can scarcely be so low that he will not send what the family does not use. If it is very low, he is likely to run his dairy carelessly and filthily, perhaps not even thinking a separate room or building worthwhile, but allowing the work to go on amid the smoke, dirt, and squalor of his kitchen. This was true of almost every Scottish farmer’s dairy thirty or forty years ago, and remains true of many. The causes that gradually raise the price of butcher’s meat—growing demand and, as the country improves, a declining supply of animals fed at little or no expense—similarly raise the price of dairy produce, naturally linked to that of meat and to the cost of feeding cattle. The higher price pays for more labor, care, and cleanliness. The dairy becomes more deserving of the farmer’s attention, and the quality of its produce gradually improves. Eventually the price makes it worthwhile to devote some of the richest and best-cultivated land to keeping cattle solely for the dairy; once it reaches that height it can hardly rise further. If it did, more land would soon be devoted to this use. It seems to have reached this height in most of England, where much good land is commonly used this way. Outside the neighborhoods of a few large towns, it seems nowhere in Scotland to have reached it yet: ordinary farmers there seldom use much good land to grow cattle feed solely for dairy production. Though dairy prices have risen considerably in recent years, they are probably still too low to allow this. Scottish dairy produce is indeed as inferior to English in quality as it is lower in price. But that inferior quality may be an effect rather than a cause of the low price. Even if the quality were much better, I think most of what comes to market could not, under the country’s present circumstances, be sold for much more; the present price probably would not cover the land and labor needed for much better produce. Despite its higher price, dairy farming in most of England is not considered a more profitable use of land than growing corn or fattening cattle, the two great pursuits of agriculture. In most of Scotland, then, it cannot yet be even as profitable.

Clearly, no country’s land can be fully cultivated and improved until the price of every product that industry must raise on it is high enough to cover the cost of thorough improvement and cultivation. To do so, each product’s price must first pay the rent of good corn land, which governs the rent of most other cultivated land; and second pay the farmer’s labor and expenses as well as they are usually paid on good corn land—or, in other words, replace the stock he uses with the ordinary profit. This rise in each product’s price must plainly precede the improvement and cultivation of the land intended to produce it. Gain is the purpose of every improvement; nothing that necessarily brings a loss deserves the name. Yet cultivating land for a product whose price cannot recover the expense must necessarily bring a loss. If the complete cultivation and improvement of a country is, as it certainly is, the greatest public benefit, the rising price of these different kinds of raw produce should be seen not as a public calamity but as the necessary precursor and companion of that greatest of public benefits.

Nor has this rise in the nominal, or money, price of these kinds of raw produce resulted from a decline in silver’s value. It reflects a rise in their real price. They are worth more labor and subsistence than before, not just more silver. Bringing them to market costs more labor and subsistence, and when brought there they represent, or are equivalent to, more of both.

Third Kind.—The third and last kind of raw produce whose price naturally rises with improvement consists of things for which human industry can increase the supply only with limited or uncertain success. Although their real price thus naturally tends upward as improvement advances, at different stages of improvement it may fall, remain unchanged, or rise to varying degrees, depending on circumstances that make industry more or less successful in enlarging their supply.

Nature has made certain kinds of raw produce dependent, as it were, on other kinds, so that a country’s supply of one must be limited by its supply of the other. The wool and raw hides any country can supply, for example, are necessarily limited by the number of large and small cattle it keeps. That number, in turn, is necessarily determined by the state of its improvement and the nature of its agriculture.

One might suppose that the causes which gradually raise the price of butcher’s meat as improvement advances would have much the same effect on wool and raw hides, raising their prices nearly in the same proportion. They probably would, if the market for wool and hides were as narrowly confined in the early stages of improvement as the market for meat. But their markets ordinarily extend over very different areas.

The market for butcher’s meat is almost everywhere restricted to the country producing it. Ireland and part of British America do conduct a considerable trade in salted provisions; but these are, I believe, the only countries in the commercial world that do so, or that export any substantial share of their butcher’s meat.

By contrast, the market for wool and raw hides is very seldom confined to their country of origin even in the earliest stages of improvement. They can readily be shipped to distant countries—wool without preparation, raw hides with very little. Since they furnish materials for many manufactures, industry abroad may create demand for them even when industry at home does not.

It takes a long time for improvement to bring cattle prices high enough to make cultivating land for their feed profitable. Yet cattle may be the first product in this second group to reach that price. Until they do, improvement seems unable to approach even the level it has reached in many parts of Europe.

Cattle may be among the first in this group to reach that price, while venison may be among the last. Venison may seem extravagantly expensive in Great Britain, but its price does not come close to covering the cost of a deer park. Anyone experienced in raising deer knows this. If the price did cover the cost, raising deer would soon become an ordinary branch of farming, just as raising small birds called turdi was among the ancient Romans. Varro and Columella tell us that raising those birds was very profitable. In some parts of France, fattening ortolans, migratory birds that arrive there lean, is said to be profitable too. If venison stays fashionable and Britain’s wealth and luxury keep growing as they have lately, its price may well rise further.

There is a very long interval between the point when improvement brings an essential product like cattle to its highest price and the point when it does the same for an unnecessary luxury like venison. During that interval, many other raw products gradually reach their highest prices, some earlier and some later, depending on circumstances.

For example, scraps from the barn and stable on any farm can feed some poultry. Since they eat what would otherwise be wasted, they turn waste into value. They cost the farmer almost nothing, so he can sell them cheaply. Nearly everything he receives is profit, and the price can hardly fall so low that he stops raising this number of birds. In poorly cultivated and sparsely populated countries, poultry raised at no cost often meet all demand. They are then often as cheap as butcher’s meat or any other animal food. But a farm can never raise as much free poultry as butcher’s meat. When people grow rich and enjoy luxuries, they always prefer a rarer product to a common one if the two are almost equally good. So as cultivation and improvement bring greater wealth and luxury, poultry prices gradually rise above meat prices. Eventually they rise enough to make cultivating land to feed poultry profitable. They cannot go much higher after that. If they did, more land would soon be put to this use. In several French provinces, raising poultry is considered an important part of farming and profitable enough for farmers to grow considerable amounts of Indian corn and buckwheat to feed them. A farmer of moderate means there sometimes keeps four hundred fowls in his yard. Raising poultry does not yet seem to be generally regarded as so important in England. Poultry is certainly more expensive there than in France, since England imports significant amounts from France. During improvement, each kind of animal food must naturally reach its highest price just before it becomes common practice to cultivate land to raise it. Before that practice is widespread, a shortage must drive up its price. After it becomes common, farmers usually discover new feeding methods and raise much more of that food on the same area of land. Abundance forces the farmer to sell for less, and those improvements also make cheaper sales affordable. If they did not, the abundance would not last long. This is probably how the introduction of clover, turnips, carrots, cabbages, etc. has helped bring the usual price of butcher’s meat in London somewhat below its price around the beginning of the last century.

A hog eats filth and eagerly consumes many things that every other useful animal rejects. Like poultry, it is first kept to make use of waste. As long as pigs raised at little or no cost can meet all demand, pork reaches the market much more cheaply than any other butcher’s meat. But once demand outgrows this supply, farmers must deliberately grow food to feed and fatten hogs, as they do for other cattle. Pork prices then necessarily rise. Whether they end up higher or lower than other meat prices depends on whether the country and its farming methods make hogs more or less expensive to feed than other cattle. According to Mr Buffon, pork costs nearly as much as beef in France. In most parts of Great Britain it now costs somewhat more.

People in Great Britain have often blamed the large rise in prices of both pigs and poultry on the declining number of cottagers and other small landholders. Across Europe, this decline has directly preceded better farming and improvement. At the same time, it may have helped raise these prices earlier and faster than they would otherwise have risen. Even the poorest family can often keep a cat or dog at no cost. Likewise, the poorest landholders can usually keep a few poultry or a sow and a few piglets at very little cost. Leftovers from their meals, whey, skimmed milk, and buttermilk provide some of the animals’ food. They find the rest in neighboring fields without causing noticeable harm to anyone. A decline in the number of small landholders must therefore have substantially reduced the food produced this way at little or no cost. Its price must have risen earlier and faster as a result. Eventually, however, as improvement advances, it must in any case rise as high as it can: high enough to pay for the labor and expense of cultivating land to feed these animals, just as that labor and expense are paid on most other cultivated land.

Dairying, like raising pigs and poultry, begins as a way of making use of what might be wasted. The cattle a farm must keep produce more milk than their young and the farmer’s family need. Most of it comes in one season. Of all the products of the land, milk may spoil fastest. In the warm season, when it is most plentiful, it hardly lasts four-and-twenty hours. By making fresh butter, the farmer can keep a small part of it for a week. Salt butter keeps for a year, and cheese lets him keep a much larger part for several years. He keeps some of these products for his family and sends the rest to market for the best available price. That price can hardly be low enough to stop him sending what his family does not use. If it is very low, though, he will probably run his dairy carelessly and dirtily. He may not even think a separate room or building for it is worthwhile and may work amid the smoke and filth of his own kitchen. Almost all Scottish farmers’ dairies were like that thirty or forty years ago, and many still are. The same causes that gradually raise butcher’s meat prices also raise dairy prices. Demand grows, while improvement reduces the number of cattle that can be fed at little or no cost. Dairy prices naturally reflect meat prices, or the cost of feeding cattle. Higher prices pay for more labor, care, and cleanliness. The dairy becomes more worthy of the farmer’s attention, and its products gradually improve. Eventually the price reaches a point where using some of the most fertile and best-cultivated land to feed cattle solely for milk becomes worthwhile. It cannot go much higher. If it did, more land would soon be put to this use. In most of England it seems to have reached that level, since much good land there is commonly used this way. Outside the areas around a few large towns, it seems not to have reached this level anywhere in Scotland. Ordinary Scottish farmers seldom use much good land to feed cattle solely for the dairy. Despite a substantial price rise in recent years, dairy products probably remain too cheap to support that use. Their quality is indeed as much below that of English dairy products as their price is lower. Yet the lower quality may result from the lower price rather than cause it. Even if the quality were much better, I believe that under present conditions in Scotland most products brought to market could not sell for much more. The current price probably would not cover the land and labor needed to produce much higher quality. Across most of England, dairy farming is not considered a more profitable use of land than growing corn or fattening cattle, the two main branches of agriculture, despite the higher dairy prices there. In most of Scotland it cannot yet be even as profitable.

Clearly, no country’s land can be fully cultivated and improved until every product that people must raise on it sells for enough to pay the cost of full improvement and cultivation. Each product’s price must first cover the rent of good corn land, which sets the rent for most other cultivated land. Second, it must pay for the farmer’s labor and expenses as well as these are usually paid on good corn land. In other words, it must replace the stock he uses and give him the ordinary profit. Each product’s price clearly must rise before the land intended to grow it can be improved and cultivated. Profit is the aim of every improvement. No change that necessarily causes a loss deserves that name. Yet improving land to produce something whose price could never repay the expense must cause a loss. The full improvement and cultivation of a country is surely the greatest public benefit. So rising prices for these various raw products should not be regarded as a public disaster. They are a necessary precursor and companion to that greatest public benefit.

The rise in the nominal, or money, prices of all these raw products has not resulted from silver losing value. Their real prices have risen. They are worth more not only in silver but also in labor and means of subsistence. Bringing them to market now costs more labor and subsistence. Once there, they therefore represent, or are worth, a greater amount of both.

Third Kind.—The third and last kind of raw product whose price naturally rises with improvement is one whose supply people can increase only within limits or with uncertain results. Its real price therefore naturally tends to rise as improvement advances. But various events can make efforts to increase its supply more or less successful. Its price can sometimes fall, sometimes stay the same at very different stages of improvement, and sometimes rise by different amounts during the same stage.

Nature has made some raw products dependent on other products. The amount a country can supply of the first is necessarily limited by its supply of the second. For example, the wool and raw hides a country can supply depend on the number of large and small cattle it keeps. That number, in turn, depends on how far the country has improved its land and on its farming methods.

It might seem that the same causes that gradually raise the price of butcher’s meat as a country improves should also raise wool and raw-hide prices by almost the same proportion. This would probably happen if, in the early stages of improvement, the markets for wool and hides were as limited as the market for meat. But their markets usually differ greatly in size.

Almost everywhere, the market for butcher’s meat is limited to the country that produces it. Ireland and some parts of British America do conduct a significant trade in salted meat. But I believe these are the only countries in the commercial world that export any substantial share of their butcher’s meat.

By contrast, even in the early stages of improvement, the market for wool and raw hides is rarely limited to the country producing them. They can easily be shipped to distant countries: wool needs no preparation and raw hides need very little. Since they supply material for many manufactured goods, industry in other countries can create a demand for them even when industry in the producing country does not.