BRITISH SOIL

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 26, 30 July 1937, Page 18

BRITISH SOIL

AGRICULTURAL BILL

MR. MORRISON'S OBJECTIVE

(From "The Cost's" Representative). LONDON, July 7. \ More interest was taken outside the , House of Commons than within when the Agricultural Bill, sponsored by ' Mr. W. S. Morrison, was read a second time. The main heads of the Bill i 1 are subsidies for lime and basic slag, i for oats, wheat, and barley, for drain- :, age, and' for a campaign against animal diseases. Only some forty members listened to the debate and the Minister's reply. I The effect of the Bill, it is claimed, will be to stir up the fertility of the soil and to keep the plough going. It is emphasised that it is not designed to put British agriculture on a wartime basis, but that it is a peace-time measure designed to. enable an expansion to take place in an emergency should it arise. "We all hope," said Mr.. Morrison, "that we shall not be asked to go to war or be subject to the pressure of the last war. But it is our duty in times of peace to formulate plans which will be of assistance to the nation if war broke out. We must build up home production, if war came, so as to save strain on our shipping which imports our food. To do so means that we should have to plough vp Nthe land. That means good soil and men and tackle to do it. Men and equipment for ploughing cannot be conjured into existence with a wave of the wand in an emergency." It was impossible to have over the whole country good grass without the plough being used, and unless assistance was given to cereal agriculture the country would suffer not only from the loss of cereals but from the loss of grassland too. Mr. Morrison also said that the grants to be made in respect of drainage schemes would be administered only by public'bodies. Primarily they would be administered by internal drainage boards, and where such bodies did not exist the County Council would be the appropriate authority. The Bill would enable the central veterinary services to .take powers to deal with grass disease. Research was being conducted into this class of disease, and when the results became available would be the time to institute a' campaign against it. THE DROP IN PRODUCTION. Mr. Ramsbotham, Minister of Pensions, who moved the second reading, said that in recent years there had been a steady fall in the production and acreage of oats and barley in the United Kingdom compared with the ten-year average of acreage and production of 1925 and 1934. Last year the production of oats was 15 per cent, and of barley 22 per cent, below the average of those years. He asked whether it was wise for Britain to be so dependent on the importation of cereals from abroad. The price of foodstuffs, both human and animal, had risen as a result of world conditions, climatic and economic, affecting the' world harvests, and the cost of production of those harvests. It was also true that for some years' Britain had literally been purchasing distress cargoes, and he believed that the time had gone by when that was possible, and that no more offers of bankrupt stock would be forthcoming. Therefore, if Britain had not considerable resources of her own, her position as a buyer in the world market became a very weak one. Apart from the economic aspect there was also the very important question of national defence to be considered. Although we had command of the seas during the Great War, Mr. Lloyd George had stated that Britain was at times face to face with starvation, and in any event it was common knowledge that there was acute anxiety on the score of food supplies during the war. Apart from the aspect of national defence there' was also the equally important effect of cereal growing on the land itself. The land mattered more than anything else. If Britain 'did not take steps to assist the growing of corn and foodstuffs it would be necessary to import an immensely increased quantity of foodstuffs from abroad, or to reduce the number of her livestock, with the result that they would become increasingly dependent on the importation of meat from abroad.