This is a single programmatic journal essay: Inama-Sternegg uses the forthcoming Vienna international agricultural congress to define the scope of a new “international agrarian policy.” Its thesis is that modern agriculture can no longer be governed as a merely local or national estate economy. Trade, credit, labor migration, futures markets, statistics, tariffs, crop specialization, and soil fertility have all become transnational problems requiring coordinated institutions.
Der internationale landwirtschaftliche Kongress, welcher sich in wenigen Tagen in Wien versammeln wird, schickt sich an, einen großen Wurf zu tun.
English translation: The international agricultural congress which will assemble in Vienna in a few days is preparing to make a great venture.
The essay first contrasts older congresses devoted to technical exchange with the Vienna programme’s concern for international regulation. Inama-Sternegg’s main example is grain futures. He treats the futures market not simply as speculation but as an apparatus for distributing world grain supplies, equalizing prices, incorporating harvest expectations, and linking local markets to the world market. Yet its rules—quality standards, weights, delivery periods, measures, and exchange customs—remain nationally fragmented.
Eine internationale Lösung der Terminhandelsfrage wünscht vor allem die Kongreßleitung.
English translation: An international solution of the futures-trading question is above all what the congress leadership desires.
His conceptual move here is characteristic: a practical market device becomes, under world-market conditions, an object of diplomatic and scientific policy. He resists moralizing attacks on futures trading, arguing that prohibitions on “Blankotermingeschäft” would be ineffective unless internationally coordinated and might merely shift business abroad. Reform should instead standardize exchange practice and reduce abuses without destroying the market’s coordinating function.
From exchange rules the essay turns to agricultural information, harvest statistics, meteorological reporting, and the Rome Agrarian Institute, all of which Inama-Sternegg presents as obvious instruments of international policy. He is more cautious about international labor placement: seasonal migration is already substantial, but the deeper rural labor problem—Landflucht and labor scarcity—cannot be solved by brokerage alone.
The sharpest political section criticizes the congress programme’s silence on grain tariffs. Inama-Sternegg defends moderate compensating duties but rejects agrarian high protection as economically and socially untenable, especially for countries dependent on imported grain.
Ein Land, das auch bei mäßigen Getreidezöllen (Ausgleichszöllen) seinen Getreidebedarf nicht selber zu decken vermag, hat kein Recht, einen Hochstand der Getreidepreise künstlich zu erzeugen, und zu erhalten.
English translation: A country which, even with moderate grain tariffs (equalizing tariffs), is unable to cover its own grain requirements has no right to artificially generate and maintain a high level of grain prices.
He then disaggregates “agricultural interest.” Alpine livestock farmers, exporters of hops, flax, barley, sugar, potatoes, and spirits, and consumers do not all benefit from high tariffs. Protection may provoke retaliation, restrict export branches, and burden food supply. This is where the essay’s economic sociology becomes most explicit: agriculture has itself changed through specialization, credit, capital, market adaptation, and entrepreneurial calculation.
Und darum lassen sich auch die Schäden der Landwirtschaft nicht mehr mit alten Hausmitteln kurieren.
English translation: And so the ailments of agriculture can no longer be cured with old household remedies.
Against the Agrarier, Inama-Sternegg argues that their programme is not an international policy but a national rent strategy: high duties, subsidies, and tax relief seek artificial revenue increases through state power. Such a politics divides Austrian, Hungarian, and German agrarians from one another instead of discovering common problems.
Internationale Gesichtspunkte, die von Gemeinsamkeit der Interessen ausgehen, fehlen in dem Programm der Agrarier.
English translation: International viewpoints, proceeding from a community of interests, are lacking in the program of the agrarians.
The essay culminates by shifting from prices to production capacity. The true international agrarian question is not how to force up product prices but how to preserve and increase the productive power of the soil under conditions of diminishing returns. Ricardo and Liebig supply the theoretical frame, while Strakosch’s proposals on crop selection and nutrient economy illustrate a more scientific path for policy.
Das Zentralproblem der Landwirtschaft ist noch immer die Frage der Bodenerschöpfung; sie ist eine wirklich internationale, ja wohl schon eine Frage der Weltwirtschaft.
English translation: The central problem of agriculture is still the question of soil exhaustion; it is a truly international question, indeed already a question of the world economy.
Its relevance lies in this double critique: Inama-Sternegg accepts globalization and market institutions, but insists they need public norms, shared knowledge, and ecological foresight. “International agrarian policy” therefore means neither free trade dogma nor protectionist nationalism, but the coordinated management of markets, food supply, production standards, and the “nationalen Nährstoffkapital” on which modern agriculture ultimately depends.
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