IMPROVEMENT OF FARMING

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26723, 6 May 1952, Page 7

IMPROVEMENT OF FARMING

BRITAIN TO LAUNCH CAMPAIGN (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, May 5. The British Government will begin a drive this week to promote good farming and to eliminate the bad farmer. The Minister of Agriculture (Sir Thomas Dugdale) will meet the chairmen of country agricultural committees to explain what he wants done. - This information was given to the House of Lords by Lord Carrington. Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture. During a debate on agriculture, the bad farmer had been described as "an enemy of society.” Lord Carrington said Sir Thomas Dugdale would ask committees to be more active in discharging their duty of promoting efficiency. If advice failed, they must be ready to exercise their powers of supervision and dispossession more freely. In addition to the committees. Sir Thomas Dugdale also proposed to meet the principals of the chief organisations of landowners, farmers, and workers, to discuss with them the part they could play. Lord Carrington said there was no doubt that some landowners had lost interest in the standard of husbandry of their tenants. It should be part of the Government's task to convince them that they had a responsibility and a great opportunity to help the campaign for more food. All concerned should be more vigorous in their efforts. “I think we have laid the foundation for a sound, balanced, and prosperous agriculture,” Lord Carrington said. “With the support of all concerned. we shall reap the full fruit of our policy.” Lord Carrington told the House that losses of agricultural land to industry were one of the most serious difficulties. The Government was making every effort to see that this sort of development affected food-producing land as little as possible.

Viscount Hudson, a war-time Minister of Agriculture, said Britain's food position had radically changed for the worse, and he believed it was a permanent chajnge. Over the years the British public had come to believe that cheap food was an inherent right, irrespective of its effect on the primary producers.

No amount of subsidies, and no system of rationing could alter the fact that, as a nation, Britain would in future have to give up some consumer goods and services if she were to obtain the food required, said Lord Hudson. The sooner that was realised, the better. What was needed to-day, was a return to the sense of urgency that prevailed among farmers during the Second World War.

Memorial to U.S. Soldiers.— Sir John Lavarack, Governor of Queensland, yesterday unveiled a memorial to American servicemen in Newstead Park, Brisbane. Many former members of the American Bth Army, now settled in Australia, were present. Their war-time commander. Lieuten-ant-General R. L. Eichelberger, read the words inscribed on the base of the memorial. “They passed this way,” and said: “We passed this way nroudlv. There is no question about the fact that, if necessary, we shall nass this way again.”—Brisbane, May 5.