PLANNING AND THE FUTURE OF FARMING

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 297, 12 September 1934, Page 8

PLANNING AND THE FUTURE OF FARMING

At first glance, two adjoining sentences' in the cabled report of Professor Scott Watson’s address’ to the British Association .for the Advancement of. Science • fail .to dovetail. ■'■’ ‘‘The danger of,', [agricultural] planning,” he says, “is that it. may be twisted to increase production in one country at the expense of others.” Then, in the next sentence, “Yet planning is the ‘ only /'solution of. agricultural „ distress?’/ The apparent inconsistency disappears if agricultural distress can be viewed as' a world problem, and not as'the problem of any one country; and if by planning we.can bring ourselves to mean planning Tor the whole world in the interest of the whole -world. _ ■- , ..; For that matter, any discussion on this subject is useless without preliminary definition of terms. Economics is a most: confusing scienceto some-people because it will persist in giving .words meanings other than the meanings attaching to' them in current talk. In ' many cases the difference is explained by the looseness of current talk; but -here, with “planning,” we have an instance of economics adopting a word from everyday usage to describe something new. The use of the word cannot but lead to confusion unless we have a clear idea of it means. The setting up of import barriers to protect the farmers of any one country from world competition does not qualify , to be regarded as planning in the economist’s meaning of the word. That is why Professor Watson is able to say* in one breath that the present agricultural crisis could have been mitigated had the nations realised that the cheap producer in new countries must displace the dear producer in old countries, and in the next breath to endorse planning, despite the obstacle that most planning for the moment directed to preventing this very realisation. > Notwithstanding vehement differences of opinion as to how, and when, and to what extent the direction of international trade shall be subject to governmental control, there is throughout the world to-day amazing unanimity on the fundamental need for control of some kind. As a New Zealand Minister has said: “We are all planners now.” .The trouble is that there are hardly two of us able to agree upon what we mean by planning. Professor Watson thinks there cannot be a large increase in the numbers employed in British agriculture without considerable cost to the consumer. That cost could be avoided by a return to complete freedom of trade; but the trouble then would be the sudden and sharp decrease in the number of men engaged in farming at Home. Therefore very few people wish to get back to Free Trade under the old rules, or, rather, ■without . rules. On the other hand, it is not easy to reconcile hunger, and poverty in one'eountry with bursting abundance in another. Unbridled Protection is no more acceptable than Unrestricted Free Trade. All the talk about planning i-s an expression of an underlying feeling that there must be a middle course, and .of the world’s intense yearning to find it. It will not be fdund—or when found will not be fully availed of—until we develop a new philosophy of international trade, discarding the outworn but embracing the unworn parts of Free Trade and Protection both.