The Fertility of Land 1.The requisites of production are commonly spoken of as land, labour and capital: those material things which owe their usefulness to human labour being classed under capital, and those which owe nothing to it being classed as land.The distinction is obviously a loose one: for bricks are but pieces of earth slightly worked up; and the soil of old settled countries has for the greater part been worked over many times by man, and owes to him its present form.There is however a scientific principle underlying the distinction.While man has no power of creating matter, he creates utilities by putting things into a useful form;(1*) and the utilities made by him can be increased in supply if there is an increased demand for them: they have a supply price.But there are other utilities over the supply of which he has no control; they are given as a fixed quantity by nature and have therefore no supply price.The term "land" has been extended by economists so as to include the permanent sources of these utilities;(2*) whether they are found in land, as the term is commonly used, or in seas and rivers, in sunshine and rain, in winds and waterfalls.
When we have inquired what it is that marks off land from those material things which we regard as products of the land, we shall find that the fundamental attribute of land is its extension.The right to use a piece of land gives command over a certain space -- a certain part of the earth's surface.The area of the earth is fixed: the geometric relations in which any particular part of it stands to other parts are fixed.Man has no control over them; they are wholly unaffected by demand; they have no cost of production, there is no supply price at which they can be produced.
The use of a certain area of the earth's surface is a primary condition of anything that man can do; it gives him room for his own actions, with the enjoyment of the heat and the light, the air and the rain which nature assigns to that area; and it determines his distance from, and in a great measure his relations to, other things and other persons.We shall find that it is this property of "land" which, though as yet insufficient prominence has been given to it, is the ultimate cause of the distinction which all writers on economics are compelled to make between land and other things.It is the foundation of much that is most interesting and most difficult in economic science.
Some parts of the earth's surface contribute to production chiefly by the services which they render to the navigator:
others are of chief value to the miner; others -- though this selection is made by man rather than by nature -- to the builder.
But when the productiveness of land is spoken of our first thoughts turn to its agricultural use.
2.To the agriculturist an area of land is the means of supporting a certain amount of vegetable, and perhaps ultimately of animal, life.For this purpose the soil must have certain mechanical and chemical qualities.
Mechanically, it must be so far yielding that the fine roots of plants can push their way freely in it; and yet it must be firm enough to give them a good hold.It must not err as some sandy soils do by affording water too free a passage: for then it will often be dry, and the plant food will be washed away almost as soon as it is formed in the soil or put into it.Nor must it err, as stiff clays do, by not allowing the water a fairly free passage.For constant supplies of fresh water, and of the air that it brings with it in its journey through the soil, are essential: they convert into plant food the minerals and gases that otherwise would be useless or even poisonous.The action of fresh air and water and of frosts are nature's tillage of the soil; and even unaided they will in time make almost any part of the earth' s surface fairly fertile if the soil that they form can rest where it is, and is not torn away down-hill by rain and torrents as soon as it is formed.But man gives great aid in this mechanical preparation of the soil.The chief purpose of his tillage is to help nature to enable the soil to hold plant roots gently but firmly, and to enable the air and water to move about freely in it.And farmyard manure subdivides clay soils and makes them lighter and more open; while to sandy soils it gives a much needed firmness of texture, and helps them, mechanically as well as chemically, to hold the materials of plant food which would otherwise be quickly washed out of them.
Chemically the soil must have the inorganic elements that the plant wants in a form palatable to it; and in some cases man can make a great change with but little labour.For he can then turn a barren into a very fertile soil by adding a small quantity of just those things that are needed; using in most cases either lime in some of its many forms, or those artificial manures which modern chemical science has provided in great variety: and he is now calling in the aid of bacteria to help him in this work.
