FARMERS IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28222, 9 March 1957, Page 9

FARMERS IN BRITAIN

LESS GROWING URGED

In a letter to the British journal, “Farmer and Stock Breeder,” Lord Bledisloe, a former Gover-nor-General of New Zealand, appeals for more independence on the part of British farmers. “Sharing as I do, the view that the food-consuming public and the general taxpayer, after a gratifying sympathy for some years with the claims of British farmers, are displaying an increasing impatience (which threatens to develop into active hostility) with the ‘groaning’ and ‘moaning’ of our farming community, I have read with intense relief the authoritative letter of Mr David W. Newell, of the Midland Agricultural College, Sutton Bonnington, Leicestershire. and his prudent appeal to them to strive harder—with temporary Government assistance—to work out their own economic salvation,” he writes.

“We cannot afford, by myopic pessimism or the continuous posture of mendicants, to evoke public hostility. Incidentally, it is a somewhat humiliating role for the successors of the once-proud and independent ‘yeomen of England’.”

“As a commercial farmer for over half a century, I am acutely conscious of the disquieting economic vicissitudes of our most vital industry. These have, I confess, caused me in the recent past to seek the valuable advice of the Agricultural Economic Department of Bristol University in order to avoid an imminent net farm loss, consequent upon excessive expenditure on milk production. It has proved successful. “The two countries with whose husbandry (apart from that of Britain) I am most intimately acquainted, are New Zealand and Denmark, and I can testify incontrovertibly that in both (1) the average standard of farming is higher than it is in Great Britain; and (2) co-operation (the salvation of the small farmer) is—unlike . British experience—universally practised, with consequent independence of Government control and (as here) heavy subsidisation.” A Retort Lord Bledisloe’s letter brought a sharp retort two weeks later from Dr. L. Harding, of Sussex, who recently visited New Zealand. He said: “It is a sweeping assertion that New Zealand has a higher standard of farming than us, without making any qualification whatsoever as to the variety of farming undertaken and the difficulties associated with farming in the English clirfiate. Not only the cattle but everyone in New Zealand can, figuratively, be regarded as living on grass, and as for mixed farming with a high proportion of arable land this is found only in certain areas. “Only recently when I was in the Waikato and visiting the research station there, I was really laughed to scorn when I asked whether they did not go in for ley farming in that area. I was told that they would not think of ploughing up these pastures, which I quite understood. “Whilst it is true that in 'this country we have a lot of small farms which, because of shortage of capital and implements, cannot be run on the best lines, the fact is there is no country in the world which has, on the average, a more scientific attitude to our agricultural operations or a higher production per unit after all circumstances are taken into account.

“It is very easy for a farmer in New Zealand to make milk from grass with little equipment and practically no housing of any kind to be bothered with. He can, therefore, make cheap milk, and even pay a sharemilker a considerable income for doing nothing. more or less than milk. “In general, he has not got the unproductive work that we have in the way of hedging and ditching, and he does not do the amount of cultivation but relies for his extremely high yields of grass on superphosphate. The amount of labour he employs is infinitesimal. “Some of these things are of very great importance when considering whether the British farmer is doing a better job or not than either the New Zealand or the Danish farmer.”