Economic and financial section > Agricultural crisis > Volume 1

— g8 —
The excess of exports over imports in the case of the dairy products of the principal
exporting countries amounted in thousands of tons to:
Butter
Cheese
1909-1913
254
210
1926
317
372
Together 464 689
The following percentages show the respective shares of particular countries:
Denmark . . .
Netherlands . .
Switzerland . .
Italy
Finland ....
Russia . . . .
Canada ....
Australia . . .
Argentine . . .
New Zealand .
Other countries
1909-1913 1926
18 28
19 19
6 4
5 5
2 2
14
16 9
7 8
1 4
9 18
3 3
100 100
Comprehensive enquiries into the consumption of dairy products are not available.
Enquiries in Germany and Austria lead to the conclusion that the consumption is steadily
increasing, but has probably not yet reached the pre-war level.
The statistical material on stock-breeding and the consumption of animal products
is defective. It shows, however, that the overseas exporting countries, especially
New Zealand and the Argentine, and, in Europe, Denmark, are making great efforts
to expand their exports and to continue to extend their markets. That development
is bound to affect the agriculture of those countries which are anxious to bring their
production up to its previous level—are indeed compelled to do so, if they are to continue
to exist.
Here, again, it is impossible to speak of any absolute over-production. The tendency,
so far as consumption is concerned, is rather to favour the production of live-stock. But
what affects the market so unfavourably is the shifting of the centres of production.
The centre of gravity in the production of mass agricultural products has shifted, under
the influence of the economic situation during and since the war, to countries which before
the war took a very much smaller share in supplying the import requirements of Europe. Their
efforts to retain, and indeed extend, the markets they have captured cut across the necessary
efforts of the agriculture of the industrial countries and of the East European agricultural
exporting States to recapture the markets they have lost. The result is unrestricted competition
and disorganisation of the market, and accordingly permanent conditions of depression.
This is bound to be felt most in those countries in which the increasing production
of Eastern Europe is endeavouring to find an outlet for its surpluses; and it is precisely
at this point of intersection that Austria stands.