FOOD PRODUCTION

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 33, 7 August 1918, Page 8

FOOD PRODUCTION

EXTRAORDINARY DEVELOPMENT

BRITISH GENIUS.

(FROM OCR OTTO CORRESPONDENT.)

LONDON, 7th June.

Sir Arthur Lee (Minister of Food Production) gave me yesterday some astonishing facts about the restoration of agriculture in England. The steps which have been taken, purely. as war measures, to make England self-supporting and thus frustrate the submarine campaign, have had extraordinary results. In a period of fifteen months the whole of the leeway made by English agriculture since the palmy days of the eady 'seventies has been recovered. The production has actually been greater than was anticipated in view of the shortage of labour, and agriculture in England to-day is in such a healthy condition that if labour were forthcoming the British Isles would be almost self-supporting. Shortage of labour to-day is the only limitation to output. . The Ministry, in regard to farming, proceeded along the lines of British custom and encouraged the self-governing principle, with the country as the unit working through the agricultural executive committee, composed of leading landowners and farmers. This decision amounted almost to a stroke of genius, just as it had done in the organisation of the Ministry of Munitions. "It would have been useless," said Sir Arthur Lee, "for us to send officials down from Whitehall to ,order the farmer to do this, that, and the other thing. Everybody hates the official, and the farmer, in this case, would have had the sympathy of all his neighbours and his class in resisting the departmental orders. I We have thrown this work upon the | local committees, which are composed of the farmers themselves. There is nothing a fanner hates so much as to be told by his neighbours that his place is dirty, or his fields badly cultivated." The procedure is for the Ministry to lay down the task for the year. For 1918 this consisted in the beaking up of 2£ million acres of additional grass land. This area was parcelled out amongst the different counties according to .the available area of land and the amount already in cultivation.- When the county committees had been advised of their quota they called upon their subordinates, the district committees, ■to find the land. The district committees inspected every farm in their area and scheduled . the fields which could properly be broken up. The farmers were instructed accordingly, and once this instruction issues nothing is allowed to stand in the way of its fulfilment. If the farmer cannot find the money, the authorities guarantee his account at the bank. If he cannot find labour they find it for him, or actually undertake the ploughing of the land with the tractors and the reserve of cultivating power which they always ■have available. The instruction* of the committees are, in every respect law, and after three years of what Sir Arthur playfully terms "Prussianism" of this kind, the English fanner has become infinitely more efficient and infinitely more alert than he wa3. The standard of farming has been raised immeasurably, and the whole conditions of agricultural life approximate closely to what they were in the palmy days of the English countryside. If a fanner refuses to do what he is requested to do he can be prosecuted, and, needless to- say, there have been very many prosecutions. The committees actually have the power to dispossess a man who is either unable or unwilling to use his land as the State thinks he should use it, and many hundreds of inefficient farmers have been dispossessed. The Food Production Department has issued over 100.000 orders, and has conducted thousands of prosecutions to secure the fulfilment of its demands. Simultaneously with this, great increase in production and the restoration of agricultural life in England, the opinion of the farming community, Sir A. Lee says, has turned very decisively against • the incompetent man.