The Press Wednesday, February 28, 1923. "The Way to Agricultural Success."

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17700, 28 February 1923, Page 8

The Press Wednesday, February 28, 1923. "The Way to Agricultural Success."

The present condition of farming in England is so serious as to demand and receive from the Government and numerous organisations connected more or less closely with the land an amount of attention that lias not been given to it for many years. The situation, as it exists to-day, may be described in a few lines. Last year the total area under crops and grass in England and Wales was 26,026,000 acres, of which the arable area accounted for 11,311,000 acres, a reduction of 308,000 acres compared with the arable areai in 1921. A worse feature of the position is that this reduction was a continuation of a process that has-been going ,' on since 1918, to such an extent that ' the loss of another 3G\>,OOO iacres under the plough would practically bring the country back to the position it occupied in 1914. These figures, and the further fact that in the past five years the area llteld in small holdings of from one acre to fifty acres-has 'diminished from 275,334 to 273,630 acres should have ensured for an article "The Way "to Agricultural' Success" in the " Nineteenth. Century," by Mr Christopher' Turner, k very large number of deeply /interested readers. Mr Turner has made a study of questions concerning the land, he has written several books on various cognate subjects, and his views are held in respect, as. those of an expert. His solution of England's agricultural decline is the substitution of occupying ownership for tenancy.' For the nationalisation of the f land, making all tenants of the State, he has a profound dislike. Of the communal system he remarks that it exists only in., backward and half-civilised -countries and is always accompanied by a lower yjeld of produce from, the land. In England, thbugft the land is almost wholly owned :by individuals —many of them great landowners— "from the point of view :"■ of production the land is actually '"cultivated under the system of 'ten- " aney' and not'under tl?at of 'occupy- ] ,'.'•' ing ownership.' " And then he goes, on to describe what, has happened in Denmark and to hold it up as an exj ample which should be followed by England. Seventy years ago, it seems, Denmark was in the position, as regards farming, which England is in today; of Danish farmers 88 per cent. were tenants of large landowners, and the remaining 12, per cent, owned their farms. That is practically the present proportion of tenants and owner-occu-piers in England. The Danish Government, recognising that the tenantfarmer system did not get the best re- 1 suite from/ the land, set to work to increase the proportion of occupying owners) and T>y the ready co-operation of the large landowners and the institution of land banks they succeeded so fat that to-day "only 12 men out of 11 every hundred farmers in Denmark "are tenants; the other eighty-eight " are owners of their land," with the result that Denmark has "the most "highly developed and prosperous "country-side in the world." Under this system the productive capacity of the land has steadily advanced. The yield of wheat, which not many years ago was 30 bushels per acre—the same as in England—now averages well over 40 bushels, though with a much more favourable climate the English yield still stays at 30 bushels, as it has been for many years. Handicapped by climatic conditions the Danish farmer secures from the soil a return 60 to 70 per. cent, greater than the English fanner obtains, and is further assisted, says Mr Turner, bj his "splendid business organisation," which gives him profits undreamed of in England. Denmark progresses in all things relating to the land. In England, on the other hand, cultivation is gradually declining. "In 1814 we produced as much "food as wo did in and a'hout " 1850 in the heyday of our agriculture "we were.feeding far more people "Chan in. 1914. In regard to wheat

" we then provided home-grown wheat " for three times as many people as "we did in 1914." The answer to the question why English farming should be in such a parlous condTTion is, in Mr Turner'-s opinion, that for years past all attention has heen concentrated on town development and the rural side of English civilisation has been neglected. He urges, therefore, the encouragement by all possible means of the system of "occupying ownership,'' and the furnishing of assistance to the agricultural labourer to become a landowner as well as a land-worker. In addition to this, we should say, is the necessity for providing some means of instructing farmers how to make the most of their land. Such knowledge, contrary, apparently, to general belief, d'X'ti not come by nature; it has to be acquired, and this applies to New Zealand no less than to England. We do a good deal, and oiiite rightly, to teach lads how to become good tradesmen, but the desirableness—we might say the imperative necessity—for affording them similar instruction in the art and craft of agriculture is not yet sufficiently realised.