Wheat Growing In Britain.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 16841, 22 May 1920, Page 8

Wheat Growing In Britain.

]>uring the past four years the wheat situation in this country has been badly handled by the Government, with the result that there is no kind of assurance that the crop next season will be adequate to the country's needs. The beat that can be said for the Government's policy is that it has not been more unsatisfactory than the policy pursued by the British Government, which in March found itself obliged to make an effort, too belated to produce results for the current season, to repair its mistake by guaranteeing the British grower a price less incommensurate with the true value of wheat than had previously been decided upon. At the beginning of March the Government an-

nounced that the price was to be fixed at about 75s a quarter. There were two distinct reasons why British farmers could very fairly complain of this. In the first place the price of 75s was fixed in 1917 in connexion with the Corn Production Act, when the minimum wage of agricultural labour was fixed at 255. The general understanding was that there should be a relation between the wages and the price of wheat. But although the minimum wage had been increased to 425, the Government proposed that the 1917 price should stand. In the second place foreign wheat was actually selling at an average price of 114s, and had in some instances gone up to over 130s. British farmers asked, a= New Zealand farmers did, why they should be obliged to make the sacrifice of selling their products far below the

real value, and they were making up their minds to give up wheat grcwing in favour either of growing barley or of turning much of their arable land into pasture. The outlook seemed to the Government to be sufficiently serious to warrant better treatment of the farmer, or, rather, the holding out of better encouragement to him to grow wheat. Accordingly it was decided in the middle of March to raise the price to 9os. This was still much below the price of foreign wheat, but it was hoped that it would arrest the decline of the farmers' interest in wheat-growing. The farmers themselves desire a guaranteed minimum cf 100s for two years, and of 80s for the ensuing decade. These, of course, are very high prices measured by the old standards, but they are manifestly not,more than sufficient to induce the British farmer to keep his plough going. For Britain, as for New Zealand, the ultimate problem is the preservation of the wheat-growing industry. If wheat were left to take its chanco in the hands of farmers unhampered by control or any doubt respecting minimum and maximum prices, the nation would be the gainer in the long run. There would be years of dearth and high prices, but their would also bo years of cheapness and plenty, and in the end these would balance each other. Modern society, however, is unwillijig to take long views; it insists upon present comfort at all times, and sees no alleviation of present discomfort in the prospect, even a certain prospect, of a counter-balancing windfall of ease to follow. Politicians are hampered by this fact, and it is not alone in dealing with wheat prices that the necessity for placating the complainants of the moment leads to legislation productive of ill results. In this particular case they have resolved that every country which can do so shall grow at least as much wheat as it requires for its own population, and that the .wheattgrowing industry must be kept alive and active. Yet they are afraid of what "The Times'' calls "the " ignorance and prejudice which ani- " mate the mass of urban voters on all '"questions of the cost of agricultural "produce." They cannot have it both ways. They cannot preserve wheatgrowing, and at the same time refuse to the industry the conditions necessary to its preservation.