Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1938, Síða 161

INTER-NORTHERN COMMERCE
151
exports have receded a little during the last few years owing to
marketing difficulties, but they still constituted 73 per cent. of our
total exports of goods of domestic origin in 1936. They thus pro-
cure the greater part of the foreign exchanges with which we pay
for our imports, including the raw materials used by agriculture
itself. It is hardly possible to make an exact calculation of the
proportion of our agricultural production which rests on the
basis of imported feedstuffs and fertilizers, but it is safe to say
that a material reduction of our foreign trade would not only
render our agriculture less profitable, but also diminish its pro-
ductive capacity. Our able farmers may succeed in substituting
home-grown for imported feedstuffs to some extent. But that
Danish farmers use imported raw materials, as at present, is in
itself a desirable thing, because it means that foreign soil is utilized
in the service of Danish economic life. For a small country
like Denmark, with such a one-sided natural equipment as ours,
autarchy must necessarily spell an violent reduction of the present
standard of life, not only because the state of our resources for-
bids us to produce many of the goods which are indispensable
to a modern civilized community, but also because nearly all
the branches of our economic life — not only the manufacturing
industries, but also agriculture — are so dependent on foreign
raw materials.
If economic co-operation with other countries is to assist
us in the situation where we find ourselves at the present moment,
it must take the form of increased marketing possibilities for our
exports of domestic products, especially those of our agriculture.
Is there then any possibility that a more intimate economic
co-operation with our Northern neighbours might increase the
markets for our agricultural produce? ¥e have seen that our agri-
cultural exports to those countries are insignificant at the present
moment. Is this state of things an unavoidable consequence of
natural conditions, or is there any chance of altering it?
¥e are brought up on the idea that as an agricultural country
Denmark is, in the nature of things, superior to Sweden, Norway,
and Finland, owing to the fertility of her soil and her relatively
favourable climate. Denmark, it is asserted, is a country of rich
arable land, whereas the Scandinavian peninsula and Finland are
countries of rocks and forest. Let us for a moment examine
whether this is a true picture.
The total arable area of Sweden is about one half as large