THE FARM PICKET

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 104, 30 October 1933, Page 7

THE FARM PICKET

FAMINE IN NEW CLIEB

SOCIETY AND THE SOIL

"Farmers' strike!" "Pickets in dairy areas! 5' "Give us our production costs!" These cries from the United States can hardly bo tested, at this distance, as to the solidity (or otherwise) of the facts behind them. Tho extent, and the depth, of tho American- farmers' strike cannot bo measured, amid the Babel of report. Tho only definite statement is that, generally speaking, the foodstuffs from tho farm—the corn, milk, etc. —aro getting past the pickets. But thcro is more in it than tho actual realism of the moment. Tho very phrase "farmers' strike," conjures up visions of how society would fare if class-conscious etrifo, long existent, were complicated by a war of country and city. There is in England a farmer with an imagination. His name is. A. G. Street, and he is a correspondent of "The Listener." Ho has a gift for putting on paper tho farm atmosphere of England, which is not quite the farm atmosphere of New Zealand, but perhaps near enough. And ho writes this truth, common to all farming: — "Deep down in our minds we know that, without the harvest of the earth, wo should all perish. Farming, even in this glut period of history, ia still tho foundation of the- life of tho world. It is possiblo for a man and his family to livo solely on tho produce of a piece of land, but it is not possible for anyone to exist unless tho land of the world is farmed." CORN-MINDED IN A MILK REGIME. . New Zealand, or any rate the North Island, ia milk-minded. Before that tho North Island was wool-minded. But it seems that Britain, though her grain harvest has become only ancillary to her livestock industry, is still cornminded. Corn is a tradition dating back to (and before) Joseph, and England is an old country. Prom the corn harvest, "the averago farmer gets more joy and satisfaction than from the major and more prosaic branches of his business, such as dairying, egg production, and the like." Major branches! Yes, very much major. "It is true that today the grain crop in this country is only a rather small proportion of our farming output, but tho corn harvest will never vanish from this island no mater what further changes may occur in our farming industry in the future. Grain today, about 11 per cent, of our farming, is grown as a necessary complement to tho livestock branch of the industry, which accounts for some 70 per cont. One is necessary to the other in about that proportion, and generally speaking over tho bulk of our land grain can only be grown successfully if the farm carries a' good stock of animals. . . . The old cycle, ' crop-stock-manure-soil,' still governs the major part of British farming." Today, in our complex civilisation, a great number of people never come into contact with agricultural production. They hardly know it. Yet, without it, their urban industries would not run. Has not this American cry of "farmers' strike"—even if it be as yet no more than a cry—a meaning for them? Tho older countries havo known food famine. New Zealand has not. They havo known food famine through visitations of Nature and through war. Their populations, through the tradition (if not the actuality) of famine, still think of farming from the subsistence standpoint rather than from the farmprofit standpoint. Their populations think of farming in the sense of corn and bread rather than of milk cheques. And this seems to be why the English population—even in cities as well as in country-^i3 today corn-mended rather than milk-minded, notwithstanding that grain is but 11 per cent, of English farming. England is. corn-minded by tradition. A real farmers' strike would make all peoples. corn-minded. MAXIMUM SUN,' MINIMUM LABOUR. "The town-dweller," writes Mr, Street, "also loves the corn harves: more than any other branch of our home farming. ... He never bothers to ask his farmer friends how the cows are milking or how the hens are laying, but he does ask about' the corn harvest." And the English summer has smiled on corn. "This year has been a good year for nearly all farm crops, and especially for grain. Ido riot think that I have ever known a summer when rain has been intermingled with sunshine so satisfactorily from a farming point of view." ' But—where are the workers? Herein England is as other countries. The field workers have largely gone. "Here and there one can see the latest harvesting tool —the combine harvester. A tractor hauls it slowly round and round the field of standing grain. Two men ride on this insatiable Moloch of tho fields—one to watch and adjust the machine to different crop levels and. ground inequalities, and the other to take off the bags of threshed grain. Thus three men do tho work of twenty... . . Granted, in these days, the older methods do not pay, but the idea which they gave of everybody, both men and horses, toiling to get the fruits of the earth safely into store for the coming winter was a satisfying ono. Years ago the corn harvest pressed the whole community into its'service —now it is performed by a few men managing a lot of complicated machinery." ■