BRITISH AGRICULTURE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 28, 13 November 1939, Page 4

BRITISH AGRICULTURE.

In a few words Sir Thomas Middleton, the noted authority on English agriculture put before the British Association for the Advancement of Science the paradox of British fanning. “During the decade 1831-40 the land of Great Britain maintained a population of 17 millions,” he said. “It now provides food for about 14 millions, and this although farmers to-day have available, as their predecessors had not, artificial manures, first-rate implements, improved varieties of crops, and all the assistance which a century of scientific study has given to agriculture.” For a hundred years, thanks to the application of science, the productivity of agriculture has greatly increased. But its production has actually diminished —by about 18 per cent. The explanation is, of course, economic, remarks the “Spectator.” Fix the prices of farm products high enough, and all the cardinal food-requirements |of the island’s population could be satisfied from the island’s soil. Fix them low enough, and the whole area would go out of cultivation. Between these two extremes—the first impracticable, the second intolerable —our actual levels of price and production represent an oscillating compromise. In peace and under normal conditions their tendency, apart from State interference, is downward. During the 191418 war it wont sharply up. But as early as 192 L it started dropping again; and now for many years the only brakes on an utterly catastrophic descent have been those which the State interposes by way of subsidies, price-fixing, mar-keting-schemes, and similar interference.