COLLECTIVE FARMING

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21578, 14 September 1935, Page 22

COLLECTIVE FARMING

TO . TBS IWTOB Or TEB PBZS9. Sir,—Your correspondent, Mr A. E. Williams, brings a welcome contribution to the topic "Collective Farming," the only lasting remedy for/cUpemployment and man-hungry Australia. Truly, as he emphasises, we can expect no help from the average farmer, who can vision no land policy outside freehold, leasehold, mortgagehold, and down to. the sad state of nohold of many farmers, and then the long procession, "urban drift." Then the townsman can see upward to skyscrapers of ferro-concrete, but he cannot see outward to the grand plain capable of supporting a probable two million people. This double conservatism of town and country, uniting in unholy wedlock, has produced the hybrid curse unemployment. As a matter of fact no one would gain more by the creation of a rural drift than the farmer. His freehold or mortgage-hold would be more valuable, an increased land population would react favourably on the industrial and commercial life of town and city, stimulating transport by rail and road, and giving the farmer that best of markets, a local market. That is what Mr I* C. Walker advocates, when he proposes to add a million people fto the population of "Sunny Southland." I think Mr Walker's scheme is .mainly industrial, on the assumption I that even with present systems of farming we can easily produce the 13 per cent, of agricultural products required by the ordinary citizen, whereas my scheme alms for the farm worker, at 50 per cent, of human requirements. See "Household Budgets" Official Year Book, 1931, pages 794, 795. By collectivism? part only of our farm lands, we ensure for the worker the "Big Three," housing, food, and clothing, and the secondary minor industries created attract population and create further employment in each group.—Yours, etc., _ September 12, 1935.