Fertility Value
See also: I was here first!, marginal land, land value, site value, urban land values relative to rural, royalties, natural opportunities, user fees, rent, rent for community, well-provisioned ship, population growth, natural resources, mines and minerals, pay for what you take, wages, wages and rent,
Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a themed collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry George (with links to sources)
MEN of different nations trade with each other for the same reason that men of the same nation do — because they find it profitable; because they thus obtain what they want with less labor than they otherwise could. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 6: Trade - econlib -|- abridged
TRADE is not invasion. It does not involve aggression on one side and resistance on the other, but mutual consent and gratification. There cannot be a trade unless the parties to it agree, any more than there can be a quarrel unless the parties to it differ. England, we say, forced trade with the outside world upon China and the United States upon Japan. But, in both cases, what was done was not to force the people to trade, but to force their governments to let them. If the people had not wanted to trade, the opening of the ports would have been useless. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 6: Trade - econlib
TRADE does not require force. Free trade consists simply in letting people buy and sell as they want to buy and sell.. It is protection that requires force, for it consists in preventing people from doing what they want to do. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 6: Trade - econlib -|- abridged
IF all the material things needed by man could be produced equally well at all points on the earth's surface, it might seem more convenient for man the animal, but how would he have risen above the animal level? As we see in the history of social development, commerce has been and is the great civilizer and educator. The seemingly infinite diversities in the capacity of different parts of the earth's surface lead to that exchange of productions which is the most powerful agent in preventing isolation, in breaking down prejudice, in increasing knowledge and widening thought. These diversities of nature, which seemingly increase with our knowledge of nature's powers, like the diversities in the aptitudes of individuals and communities, which similarly increase with social development, call forth powers and give rise to pleasures which could never arise had man been placed like an ox in a boundless field of clover. The "international law of God" which we fight with our tariffs — so shortsighted are the selfish prejudices of men — is the law which stimulates mental and moral progress; the law to which civilization is due. — Social Problems — Chapter 19: The First Great Reform.
Charles B. Fillebrown: A Catechism of Natural Taxation, from Principles of Natural Taxation (1917)
Q8. How about fertility value?
A. On the surface of the globe are countless varieties of exhaustible fertility, i.e. chemical constituency, differing in kind and degree, from the nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon of the soil to the carbon of the coal, the gold, and the diamond. Fertility as an attribute need not be predicated of agricultural land alone. Economic fertility belongs equally to any other land which yields to labor its product whether in food, mineral, or metal. Land may be fertile in wheat, corn, and potatoes. It may be fertile in cotton, in tobacco, or in rice. It may be fertile in diamonds, in gold, silver, copper, lead, or iron. It may be fertile in oil, coal, or natural gas, in a water power or water front. The value of artificial fertility is an improvement value. The value of natural fertility of any kind is a site value.