SUBSIDY FOR FARMING

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22135, 3 July 1937, Page 15

SUBSIDY FOR FARMING

SCHEME TO AID BRITISH AGRICULTURE

DIFFICULTIES OF LAND TENURE SYSTEM

(From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON. June 12. The troubles of the British farmer have been well-aired in Parliament during the last two or three weeks. On May 27 the new Minister for Agriculture (Mr W. S. Morrison) produced the Government's policy for fostering the agricultural industry. This week the proposals have been debated from various angles in the House of Commons. The outstanding feature of the new policy, from the taxpayers' standpoint, is that farming is to be subsidised to the extent of some £30,000,000 per annum. Compared with the vast sums that are voted readily for defence expenditure, social services, and housing, a sum of £30,000,000 to keep the farmer sufficiently interested in his job to remain on the land does not look large. Yet it is big enough to cause the gravest misgivings amongst many orthodox economists who still believe that persons engaged in any productive enterprise should stand on their own feet and take all that comes to them in the way of business competition. . Admittedly the agricultural industry in England, as in most parts of the world, has passed through a verv trying time. Several millions of acres of land have gone out of cultivation; very large areas have been allowed to deteriorate; the agricultural population has fallen, according to Mr Lloyd George, in 50 years from 12.5 per cent, to 5.7 per cent, of the total. In spite of all this, the production statistics of the last 10 years show that the farmers have increased the amount of home produced meat, dairy products, wheat, and potatoes. As elsewhere, the farmer has worked harder, produced more, only to find that there is little or no profit in it, and that he has been working for the landlord and the public for nothing.

Sentimental Considerations

It is futile to try to compare farming in England with the agricultural industry overseas. Farming in New Zealand is relatively a specialised business. Those who make a success of it are practical, efficient men who work their own land to the best advantage, undistracted by sentimental and other extraneous considerations which enter so largely into English farming. England has still to discover the elementary principle that the factor which contributes most to a successful and prosperous agriculture, is the ownership of the land bv the man who is expected to farm it.' Many English farmers are tenants on estates managed on behalf of impoverished owners by bailiffs whose chief problem is to extract sufficient income for the landlord to enable him to maintain a position in keeping with family traditions. Taxation makes it difficult, and in recent years, with low • prices, rents have been out of proportion to the productive capacity of the farms. As a result, according to Sir Francis Acland, many of the farmers are up to their ears and over in debt, and it is doubtful whether they will ever be able to get out. In New Zealand, the insolvent farmer was given a substantial measure of relief from the burden of his debts, and was protected against eviction. Revolutionary ideas of this kind are not allowed to sprout on English soil, and the tenant is at the mercy of the landlord. But it does not alter the fact that the Government in subsidising agriculture is subsidising relics of feudalism, patronage, fox-hunting, game preservation, and an overcapitalised industry that has never had a proper chance to show what it could do under a freehold tenure.

A Successful Enterprise

Occasionally something occurs to prove that the English farmer is quite capable of cultivating land profitably*if he can buy a bit outright, and put his capital and energy into a farming enterprise unhampered by tradition and the restrictions of a leasehold. Last year, a potato grower named Halliday noticed a derelict hillside farm in Pembrokeshire, which seemed to offer possibilities. He bought 200 acres at £lO an acre. The price suggests that it must have been a pretty rough place, and it was. The land was smothered in tall bracken, gorse. and bramble. Tractors hauling disc corders, skimmers, and digger ploughs were used to break up the land, and were kept going day and night. After two months of intensive preparation the field was ready for planting. The crop was a success, and by the end of May early potatoes were being harvested, which sold for £3O a ton, and the yield was estimated at a ton and a half an acre. The success of the enterprise was due mainly to the efficiency of the methods employed to produce a crop, and to the fact that the farmer concerned could command the capital resources which enabled him to use mechanical contrivances to the fullest advantage. Generally speaking, it is not easy to acquire the freehold of agricultuial land in England at a price which has a reasonable relation to the value of the products that can be obtained from it by ordinary farming methods. There is so much social prestige attaching to the ownership of land that few owners \ ill part with it unless forced '.o do so by extreme pressure of circumstances, and no matter what subsidies are paid by the Government to farmers in England, the majority of them will never be able to compete with agriculturists overseas. There is a distinct possibility, however, that the Government assistance will eventually be

capitalised and that the landlords will benefit from it as much as the tenants.