LAND SETTLEMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 124, 21 November 1935, Page 8

LAND SETTLEMENT

NO CURE FOR BRITAIN Can land settlement cure unemployment? Viscount Astor and Mr. Seebohm Rowntree organised an inquiry to prove that it could. Very soon, they were forced to the opposite conclusion, namely, "that the scope for increased land settlement in this country is remarkably small, and the potential benefit to employment of extensive small-holdings development is, in reality, infinitesimal," says the "Daily Telegraph." A book embodying the Astor Committee's report has been published. The line of argument is this:— Three tendencies—slowing down of the population of the Western world, speeding up of agricultural productivity and high agrarian protectionism—• have made it probable that fewer persons will be required in producing food and that the present conditions of over-production and unremunerative prices will persist. We have already cut to the bone our imports of vegetables, poultry, and eggs. If we restricted further our imports of staple foodstuffs such as wheat and meat, we should be aggravating the economic difficulties of - the world, imperilling our good relations with the Empire and other countries, raising our cost of living, and increasing unemployment elsewhere. Better marketing might increase consumption, but there is little or no indication of it. Machinery is reducing agricultural employment, and is in favour of the larger type of farm. With many of these findings no observer of agricultural conditions will disagree. But is the prospect of agricultural expansion really so gloomy?

Sir John Orr has estimated that 20.000,000 of the population are spending too little on food. To raise their diet to the required standard would increase consumption by £100,000.000 per annum in retail prices. Machinery displaces labour, but it makes things cheap. The most highlymechanised farms are reporting more production and more employment than ever before in their history. Such criticisms, however, do not detract from the value of this most useful report.