Danmarks Handel og Industri

complete change in the manner of production, as they resolutely turned the farming industry into industrial agriculture, with a wholesale production of butter and pork. This radical change was undertaken with a proficiency and prescience, which not only carried Danish agriculture successfully over the critical situation, but also, within the course of only a few years, made Denmark a model country of industrial agriculture. As the home production of grain etc. did not suffice, recourse was had to raw material from foreign countries, and in this manner the extensive importation of gram, maize and artificial fodder, as also of fertilizers, was commenced, on which the increasing agricultural industry of Denmark to a very great extent has been based during the latter decennaries. In order to further specify this importation, it may be stated that in the year previous to the Great War, that is to say in 1913, among other things, more than 500,000 tons of maize and other grain for fodder, about 600,000 tons of oilcakes and 235,000 tons of fertilizers were imported to Denmark. The entire industrialising of the Danish agriculture was carried on under the co-operation of practical agriculturists and with the aids of tech- nical and chemical science and it was encouraged and supported in manv ways by the Government, amongst other things by the appointment of consulting agriculturists, by exhibitions, by awarding prizes and the like. While the entire industrial development in the towns was made with the assistance of joint-stock companies, the new agricultural development was built on the co-operative system: the farmers united themselves, each in their own district, into co-operative societies, e. g. co-operative dairies, anti co-operative slaughter-houses, to which they delivered their respective milk and pigs for further treatment, and co-operative purchasing societies and export societies of different kinds have likewise been formed. On this co- operative basis a wholesale production with export on a large scale has been worked up. In the first year of the Great War — 1914 — 1,192,000 cows had thus been registered by 178,400 members distributed among 1,380 dairies, with an aggregate production of milk of 3,100 mill. kg. At the same time 2,428,200 pigs were slaughtered at 46 Danish co-operative slaughter- houses. In 1913, the exportation of these two staple articles, butter and pork, which principally go to the English market, amounted to 91 mill, kg MHMH■