AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 127, 23 February 1938, Page 8

AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY

Address By Mr. Bruce Levy I PRODUCTIVE POWER OF LAND Introduced as one who bad a name known throughout tbe Empire to those interested in grass and the relation of the grasses to soils, Mr. Bruce Lev), of the Plant Research Bureau, Palmerston North, spoke to the Wellington Rotary Club yesterday on “Agriculture and Industry,” pointedly illustrating how dependent they were on one another. "Agriculture,” said Mr. Levy, is an industry, but the statisticians and pollticians of Great Britain do not list it among the industries, much to the chagrin of would-be-builders of un agricultural edifice on the same plane as the industrial edifice in relation to hours worked and remuneration paid. Agriculture is probably by far the greatest single industry in the world, and many of the manufacturing industries depend on agriculture as a source of supply for their raw materials, and as a consumer of manufactured goods, fertilisers and machinery. Also the great industry of distribution relies to a large measure on agricultural products, and when one sees, the feeding and clothing of a city like London, this fact is brought home to one very clearly. "The thing that strikes one most, however, in agricultural production is the relatively few people the land can support in situ on the laud. There are, for example, in ibe whole of the United Kingdom approximately 800,000 agrb cultural workers, male'and female, supporting some 3,000,000 people on the land, and it is doubtful whether Great Britain could support mote than, say, 5,000,000 people did she rely on the tillage of the. soil entirely. Simil’arly t I would say on a conservative estimate, that New Zealand could not, or should not; try to support in its agriculture more than, say, 4,000,000 people, total population, that is if each family have reasonable-living conditions and an income that will permit such families to use the conveniences and participate ip the boons that industry provides and upon which use the lifo of industry depends. Great Britain’s Might.

“Of the total population of Great Britain, only 7 per cent, is within the agricultural industry. When in Great Britain one cannot but be impressed with the fact that the might of Great Britain is in her industries, and if New Zealand is ever to become a powerful nation, she cannot do it on agriculture alone. “It is of interest to compare Great Britain with some other European countries tis far as agricultural workers (including agriculture, fisheries and forestry) are concerned.' Great Britain has 7 per cent., New Zealand 13 per cent., Belgium 19 per cent., Holland 24 per cent., Germany 30 per cent., Denmark 35 per cent., Erance 38 per cent., Czechoslovakia 40 per cent., Sweden 41 per cent., Italy 56 per cent., Finland 63 per cent., and Poland 76 per cent. The North of Ireland has on an area of 3,000,000 acres an agricultural population nearly as large as New Zealand on its 20,000,000 acres of improved country. Holland has 3i times as many people on the land per 100 acres than has Great Britain, Germany has four times, Denmark five times, France 5J times, Italy eight times, Finland nine times and Poland 11 times as many. New Zealand has one quarter of the people on the land as in Great Britain per 100 acres of improved country. “The -point I want to make is this: How do these highly-populated agricultural countries compare with Great Britain and New Zealand? My general impression is that the higher the agricultural population the poorer the people become, and I would take agricultural England as the furtherest point any country should go in its subdivision of the land. The countryside of Great Britain, which is agricultural Great Britain, is 'beautiful, and given reasonable conditions the farms are large enough in.general to support a family and furnish a good, comfortable living.' “Holland appealed to me very strikingly in regard to her agriculture and the people there with their own bonnes had an appearance and air of prosperity. New Zealand Quite Undeveloped. “New Zealand compared with Great Britain and Holland appears quite undeveloped, but this must necessarily be so on account of -the much more rugged nature of the country and its recent winning from forest. Where, however, there is carried on in New Zealand intensive dairying, sheep raising and arable- farming, these parts look equally as good to me as the best of England or Holland, and from a subdivision point of view are quite close enough. To-day we live essentially by exchange, goods for goods, service for service. The principle of this exchange is that industry exchanges with agriculture' and agriculture with industry. Where would, say, any industry be that was consuming its own output and taking nothing in exchange from agriculture? And that is much the position in peasant, small-farm agriculture to-day. It was freely claimed in certain European countries that with care thes peasant could live 90 per cent, from his holding, and when 1 queried the soundness of this in this age of industry, 1 was not very popular. Small farms mean poverty and hence inefficiency in production and land utilisation, and what probably impressed me most in peasant Europe and in parts of Ireland, was the antiquated methods and inefficiency of production. If agriculture there hud to pay standard factory wages, it would indeed be bankrupt, if it is not now actually so. Condition of Germany.

"Germany, while at the moment 80 per cent, of the holdings are small farms, has set herself a task of stabilising the size of farms. By the National Peasant Estate Succession Act farms are proclaimed hereditary estates. These may’ not be sold, nor may they be subdivided. They must be of such an area as to sustain a man, his wife, and 1 two children, and not exceeding 300 acres. This, up to this point, is sound, but these hereditary estates may have a bigger burden to bear than the man, his wife and two children, for the Act provides that the peasant who takes possession of such an estate is endowed not only with rights, but also with duties. His brothers and sisters have a claim to sustenance and education. They are further entitled to demand to be trained in a calling corresponding to the status of the estate. In case they should become independent—as for instance when a son goes into business or a daughter marries—these have a claim to equipment or dowry corresponding to the capacity of the estate. They have also the right to return borne whenever, through no fault of their own, they are in need.” Mr. Levy said that by good luck or

design, England had maintained its farming subdivisions in approximately the correct stage, whereas Ireland had subdivided far beyond the stage of economic laud exploitation. New Zealand should guard against over-subdivision, even though with unemployment the temptation was strong. The Case of New Zealand. "We have not as yet those large centres of industrial population whereby the small holder may make a living in vegetable, small fruits, and flower culture, as is the case in the denser-popu-lated parts of Great Britain,” said Mr. Levy. “It seems to me our national poliev should be farms of a size where artificial plant foods, machinery and Sciencelean be exploited to the utmost, and where, in fact, the greatest labour an acre may be concentrated at the most opportune moment—labour, not on the farm itself, it is true, but in factory, industry and seats of agricultural

research and learning, producing the knowledge and requisties whereby maximum soil exploitation can be secured. “To-day a man gets nowhere working with his own two hands alone, but given knowledge and equipment the output of many pairs of hands and brains—he may accomplish much indeed. To-day, where a farmer in the Waikato, say, produces 40,0001 b. of butterfat from his farm', he cannot claim to have produced that with his own two hands plus those of his workmen on the farm—tire fertiliser trade, the seed trade, the milking-machine trade, the farm implement trade, plant research and agricultural education have all contributed a share in that production, and this is where a full-sized and efficiently equipped farm can use the hand anil brain power of a mighty army of workers, whereas the small man struggles along and applies to the land the productive power only of his own two hands."